World No.1 Deepika Kumari shot her career-best ranking score in Olympics, but still could not find place in the top half of the qualification draw. She has been seeded ninth with a score of 663. Deepika had shot 662 in London 2012 and 640 at Rio 2016. The lone Indian archer in the women’s category, she was as inconsistent as the wind in Tokyo on Friday morning. The Jharkhand girl was sitting pretty at the fourth place after the first half of the round, having shot 334 out of 360.
However, two 53s in the eighth and penultimate shots saw her slip. A seven in the last pushed Deepika further down by two places, from seventh to ninth.
“The performance was good and bad, a little in between I would say,” Deepika was quoted as saying after struggling to cope with the wind.
Things didn’t go well for the men’s trio of Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai and Pravin Jadhav too, with Olympic debutant Jadhav ending up as the best with 656 points for a 31st place finish, three points ahead of Das who was placed 35th. Rai, in his third Olympics appearance, took the 37th spot among 64 archers.
India had identical rankings of ninth in both men’s team and mixed pair competitions. The men, appearing in their first Olympic team event since London 2012, totalled 1961 points.
JADHAV TO PARTNER DEEPIKA
Jhadav pipped Das with better scores in the rankings round and will now partner Deepika in the mixed team elimination round on Saturday. India earned a ninth place seeding on the basis of combined scores (1319) of Jhadav and Deepika.
