India's Olympic journey started with a set of disappointments, as both the men and women's archery team failed to impress in the ranking rounds of archery.
While the men's team was knocked out by an exhilarating performance by Japan in the elimination round on Saturday, the women archers finished ninth in the competition round held at Lords Cricket grounds and will start their campaign tomorrow under World number one Deepika Kumari.
Earlier, the South Korean women's team shattered the world record with a tally of 2087 while the Indian men archers Tarundeep Rai, Rahul Banerjee and Jayanta Talukdar were tied with the Japanese at 214.
In the final shoot off, Japan held their nerves and gunned India with a score of 29-27. In a closely fought-off match, Japan had scored 8, 9 and 10 in the last set while the Indian team had bagged 9, 9 and 8 which led to a shoot off.
"I am really disappointed. We were leading by three points. We all shot well but some of our 8s put us down. The crowd was really good. It was the best field I have ever seen," news agency Press Trust of India quoted Banerjee as saying.
Talukdar felt that all this happened under pressure. "I feel it has happened because of the pressure. We tried to hit 10s but it was always 9s," he said.
"All three of us were in bed for two or three days, so our bodies got weak. Yesterday, during the ranking round, I could not shoot properly because of less body power," he added.
