Paris Olympics 2024: Indian men’s archery team ousted in quarterfinals

The Indian men’s archery team, comprising Tarundeep Rai, Pravin Jadhav and Dhiraj Bommadevara, lost to Turkiye 2-6 in the quarterfinals of the ongoing Paris Olympics 2024. The Indian women’s archery team of Ankita Bhakat, Bhajan Kaur and Deepika Kumari too couldn’t go past the quarterfinal hurdle. The women’s team lost to the Netherlands 6-0.

The Indian men were not short of experience, as Tarundeep, the veteran in the group, was playing in his fourth Olympics and Dhiraj, who is competing in his first Olympics, finished fourth in the ranking round.

There were a lot of expectations from the archery teams but both the men and the women failed to live up to them.

The Indian archers will next be in action in the individual and mixed team events.

India were ranked third after the qualification round and were never in their elements. They lost the first two sets and managed to pull one back but a poor fourth set did them in. In the end, India lost 6-2 (57-53, 55-52, 54-55, 58-34).

Pravin was India’s best archer, as he shot four 10s, three 9s, and one eight pointer. Dhiraj, ranked 12th in the world, was never in his element, as he started with a poor 7 pointer and continued the same form in crunch moments, especially in the last set.

The Turkiye archers were very consistent and did not make any mistakes in their game. The World and Olympic champion Mete Gazoz led the team and along with Berkim Tumer and Abdullah Yildirmis, the Turkiye archers were on point. They only scored one eight-pointer with the rest being all 9s and 10s.

Turkiye won the first two sets, 57-53 and 55-52 to take a 4-0 lead but India forced the decider when they triumphed 55-54 in the third set.

That was the only time the Turkiye archers lost intensity as Indian archers, especially Dhiraj, had a bad day at the office as Yurkiye clinched the fourth set with a 58-54 margin.

The action now moves to the individual events and Ankita and Dhiraj will take part in the mixed team event, which commences on Friday.