Rio
de Janeiro: Day 5 of 2016 Rio Olympics brought a mixed bag of various highs and
lows for India.
India’s Bombayla Devi and Deepika Kumari
excelled as both won two games in a day to advance in the women's individual
recurve event.
Competing in her third Olympics, the
31-year-old Bombayla, who finished 24th in the ranking round, dished out a
dominating show to get the better of Chinese Taipei's Lin Shih-Chia 6-2 in the
1/16 elimination after beating Austria's Laurence Baldauff in 1/32 elimination
round.
Deepika also put up an excellent show as
she comprehensively defeated Italy's Sartori Guendalina 6-2 in the 1/16
elimination, after prevailing over her opponent from Georgia, Kristine Esebua,
6-4 in the 1/32 elimination round. The 22-year-old from Jharkhand, who had
lost in the first round in London Games four years ago, came back strongly from
a set down to register a dominating 24-27, 29-26, 28-26, 28-27 victory in the
end.
However, Laxmirani Majhi suffered a 1-7
thrashing at the hands of Slovakia’s Alexandra Longova in the first round of
the individual event.
In tennis, The Indian mixed doubles pair of
Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna will start their campaign at the ongoing Rio
Olympics on Thursday after most of the tennis matches had to be postponed due
to rain.
Meanwhile, boxer Manoj Kumar’s win over
London Olympics’ lightweight bronze-medallist Evaldas Petrauskas in the opening
round of the light welterweight (64kg) category was one of India's brightest
silver linings on Wednesday.
In weightlifting, Indian weightlifter
Satish Sivalingam finished at 11th position in the men’s 77kg Group
B, to end his campaign in Rio. He lifted a total of 329 kg but was not close to
the best lift of 346 kg in his group. The national record holder lifted 143 kg
in his first snatch lift and 148 kg in his second snatch lift but he failed to
lift 153 kg in his last snatch lift. In the clean and jerk attempt, he lifted
176 kg in the first lift and later lifted 181kg in the second attempt. But he
again failed to lift in the third and crashed out of the event.
In Judo, India’s Avatar Singh lost to
Popole Misenga of the Refugee Olympic Team in judo's 90 Kg Elimination Round of
32. The judoka from Punjab, lost by a single point at the Carioca Arena 2 on
Judo Mat 2, following the end of five minutes of regular time. The 24-year-old
suffered two penalty points that made it difficult for him. Misenga, who hails
from the Democratic Republic of Congo, effected a shoulder throw on him to seal
the victory.
On the other hand, the exit of Jitu Rai,
winner of the gold medal in the same 50m pistol event in both the Commonwealth
and Asian Games two years ago, dented India's hopes of another Olympics
shooting gold.
Jitu started the qualification by
scoring consistently and managed to hit the bull's eye on nine occasions
in what is considered as his pet event and his cumulative scores after the six
series qualification round read 92, 95, 90, 94, 95 and 88 to total 554. But a
poor sixth and final series cost him the berth to the finals.
The Indian women’s hockey team witnessed a
1-6 defeat by higher-ranked Australia in its third group stage match. The
defeat, which must have dented the team's morale, also raised big doubts over
their qualification for the quarter-finals.
With more than two weeks still left, things
are hopeful for India.
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