Shillong: Event favourite and former World No. 1 Deepika Kumari topped the chart with 668 points in the women’s recurve followed by L Bombayla Devi (646) and Laxmirani Majhi (632) as the archery event for the 12th South Asian Games 2016 kicked off at the First Ground Polo on Friday.
However, the decision of the team managers of the participating countries to allow only the two highest ranking archers from each country to to progress to the elimination round means that Majhi missed the cut on Day 1 of the event.
The biggest casualty of this system, however, was the famed Jayanta Talukdar who missed out on the elimination rounds of the individual men’s recurve events by a single point after he was pipped in the qualification round by compatriot Gurucharan Besra.
Talukdar finished with 665 points to Besra’s 666. Tarundeep Rai was the clear winner with 676 points overall.
India’s Abhishek Verma and Rajat Chauhan claimed the top two spots on the men’s compound with 704 and 693 points respectively. Purvasha Sudhir Shende topped the women’s compound with 686 points, just two ahead of fellow Indian Jyothi Surekha Vennam.
India, meanwhile, were completely dominant on the day, bagging at least the top two positions in each event.
Sojeb Sheik of Bangladesh was the highest ranked non-Indian with 653 points in the men’s recurve while Bhutan’s Karma was the top non-Indian with 628 points in the women’s recurve. Other Indians who missed the cut were Manash Jyothi Changmai and C Srither in men’s compound and P Lily Chanu and Swati Dudhwal in women’s compound.
