KOLKATA: The Indian archers' hopes of securing team quota places (three) for the Paris Olympics fell flat as both the men's and women's recurve teams crashed out in the quarterfinals of the World Archery Championship in Berlin on Tuesday. Only the top three teams were ensured team quota places.
While Korea proved to be the nemesis of the men's side, the women's trio of Ankita Bhakat, Bhajan Kaur and Simranjeet Kaur went down to the Netherlands 2-6 in the last-eight stage. The 13th seed women's team had earlier defeated Kazakhstan 6-2 and Ukraine 6-0 in the first and second rounds respectively. But some poor shooting saw them go down tamely against the Dutch side in spite of winning the first set.
The men's team of Dhiraj Bommadevara, Mrinal Chauhan and Tushar Shelke got the better of Malaysia (5-4) and France (5-3) in the first two rounds, but failed to put up any significant resistance against top-ranked Koreans, losing 1-5 in the quarters.
India can now at best return with individual quota places when the competition in the individual category begins on Thursday.
The recurve mixed team of Ankita and Dhiraj, who got a bye into the last-16, lost out to lower-ranked Italy 4-5 (35-37, 36-35, 39-37, 34-36) (16-17) in the shoot-off despite being ahead 4-2 after the third set. The top-seeded compound mixed team of Jyothi Vennam and Ojas Deotale went down to USA by a slender one-point (153-154) in the quarters.
However, the compound team of Parneet Kaur, Aditi Swami, Jyothi Vennam stunned Colombia 220-216 to make the final, but the men's side of Ojas Deotale, Prathamesh Jawkar, Abhishek Verma lost 235-230 to the Netherlands in the quarters.
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