Indian shooters falter on final day
New Delhi: Indian shooters continued to stumble in the finals on the sixth and penultimate day of the Asia Olympic Qualifying Competition as Malaysia and Saudi Arabia bag their first quota each in shooting for the upcoming Rio Games, here on Monday. Besides Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, the third available quota of the day was won by Japan, their fifth gold medal in the ongoing competition at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range. It turned out to be another day of near misses for Indians, cleared the qualifiers again but could not go beyond that. Navy’s Omkar Singh, in the men’s 10m air pistol, Arti Singh Rao and Sania Sheikh in women’s skeet, made it to their respective finals but failed to win a quota or a medal for the country that has so far assured itself of 11 quotas in shooting for Rio Olympics. The best performance for India came in the women’s skeet where youngster Sania Sheikh finished fourth after losing out to Korea’s Kim Minji 11-14 in bronze medal match.
chinappa, pallikal bow out
Ohio (USA): Indian squash players Joshna Chinappa and Dipika Pallikal were ousted from the Cleveland Classic after going down in the quarterfinals here. The sixth-seeded Joshna had the misfortune of meeting top seed Camille Serme of France. Even though she managed to put up a fight, Joshna went down in four games, losing 4-11, 11-5, 8-11, 2-11 to the French who is ranked four in the world. On the other hand, Dipika, who was unseeded, failed to put up any resistance against Amanda Sobhy, the fourth seed. The US player exploited the relatively weak backhand of Dipika to win in straight games 11-6, 11-7, 11-8.
archery World Cup crucial for Indians
Jamshedpur: The focus of the Indian archery team before the Rio Olympics is the World Cup stage-3 at Antalya, Turkey, as it would decide the fate of the Indian men’s team qualification to the mega event in August. The World Cup, to be held from June 11 to 20, will be crucial for the Indian men team as it would be qualification event to reserve full men team berth for the Rio games, said Anil Kamineni, Secretary General of Archery Association of India (AAI) here. Kamineni said Indian women team and one individual archer have already qualified for Rio. Prior to Olympic games, Indian archers (men and women) will take part in the World Cup stage-1 at Shanghai, from April 24 to Many 2.