India women archers Bombayla Devi and Deepika Kumari provided India a reason to cheer in the individual event as they both reached the prequarters of Rio Olympics on Wednesday. Boxer Manoj Kumar came up with a huge win against Evaldas Petrauskas of Lithuania in his first bout.
However, the shooters once against disappointed on Day 5 of the competition, with Jitu Rai and Prakash Nanjappa failing to reach the finals of 50m Air Pistol event. Rai's performance has to be the biggest disappointment so far in Olympics as he was one of best medal prospects from India.
India women's hockey team were left embarrassed, losing to Australia 6-1 in their third match of the Rio Olympics. India women, who are participating in the sport after 36 years absence, are yet to win a single match, and this result against the Aussies does not auger well for future matches.
The women archers might have missed a medal in the team's event, but they are making it up with some brilliant performance in the individual competition.
Bombayla, who has been one of the best archers for India in Rio 2016, continued her impressive ways, as she showed great consistency in defeating Austria's Laurence Baldauff 6-2, and came back later to get past a much tougher opponent in the form of Chinese Taipei's Lin Shih-Chia with the exact scoreline.
Deepika, after seeing her team mate come up with such a good performance, took her game to the next level and managed to defeat Kristine Esebua of Georgia, and later on Italy's Guendalina Sartori. Such solid effort from the archers have increased the chances of a medal from the event, and one hopes for some consistent effort from Devi and Deepika in future matches.
The good news for India did not end there as Manoj was at his menacing best as he threw some huge blows to 2012 London Olympics bronze medallist Petrauskas to emerge victorious by a split decision. The Indian boxer, with a quality performance, has reached the next round of the competition in the light welterweight (64kg) category.
In judo, Avtar Singh crashed out of the competition, and so has weightlifter Satish Shivalingam.
