Silver Arrow
Guangzhou, Nov. 24: Tarundeep Rai rewrote history in the archery competitions in the Asian Games when he became the first Indian individual medallist, finishing second behind South Korean world record holder Kim Woojin at the Aoti range on Wednesday.
Tarundeep lost to Woojin, who shattered the world record last Saturday, during the 144-arrow individual qualifications shooting 1,387, subdued the Indian archer 7-3 in the final.
The archer, who made up for an off-colour Rahul Banerjee, said after his silver-winning achievement that the performance of the Indians here has shown they can compete with the Koreans.
“Korean archers are extremely good. They train five to seven hours a day and we train ten hours per day. I hope that some day we will win gold and rule the world,” he said.
“I tried my best but missed points in the fourth and fifth sets and lost them by one and two point margins, but I am happy with my performance.”
The country’s best known woman archer and former world No.1 Dola Banerjee hailed the achievement of the archers who have culled one individual silver and two team bronze medals here.
“We are going home with three medals, two bronze and one silver medal. This is the best showing by the Indian archers in the Asian Games. In the last Games in Doha, we had only one bronze medal in the men’s team event.
“Here we won the silver in the individual event and a women’s team medal (bronze) for the first time,” she said.
Dola, elder sister of Rahul, also felt that the display by the archers here would help in raising the sport’s profile in India. “It would have been great if Tarun had won the gold, but this was a great performance. The performance here will help the sports and arches back home,” she added.
Archery Association of India also expressed a similar wish with secretary Paresh Mukhrerjee hailing Rai’s achievement. “The youngster performed superbly. His silver medal will give a big boost to the sport back home.”
Rai entered the gold medal match by easily overcoming Vietnam’s Trong Kien Dao 5-1 and then stunning fancied Korean 6-4 in the quarterfinals. The set score was 26-27, 30-26, 28-28, 29-27 and 28-28.
Buoyed by this super effort, the Indian shot past Chinese Taipei’s Chia Chun Sung 7-3 in the semifinal before coming a cropper in the final and settled for silver.
He won his semifinal against Sung 29-29, 26-20, 30-27, 28-26, 29-28 but was unable to recreate the magic against Woojin and lost 28-28, 27-28, 29-28, 27-28, 27-29 and settled for second place.
On Monday, Mangal Singh Champia won a bronze medal in the men’s recurve team event of archery.
Mangal had bagged a bronze in recurve team event at the 2006 Doha Games.
Mangal combined with Rahul Banerjee and Jayanta Talukdar to score a thrilling win over the Chinese Taipei team of Cheng Wei Kuo, Chia Chun Sung and Kang Tien 220-216 to win the men’s recurve team bronze.
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