Sajan, Shivani out
Young Indian swimmers Sajan Prakash and Shivani Kataria expectedly made inglorious exits in their respective events at the Olympics here on Monday. Sajan finished 41st in terms of timing amongst 43 swimmers who participated in the 200m Butterfly heats. Shivani finished 28th out of 29 swimmers in the 200m freestyle finishing 2nd among 3rd in her heat. Sajan finished a disappointing 4th out of five swimmers in his 200 metres butterfly event. Starting in lane 3, Prakash clocked 1 min 59.37 seconds in his heat and is has not qualified for the next round.
Deepika blames it on wind
India's greatest archery hope Deepika Kumari failed to deliver when it mattered the most and then blamed it on the windy conditions after the team went down 4-5 to Russia in the quarterfinals of the women's recurve competition. After the two teams were tied at 4-4, having won two sets each, the Russian trio of Tuiana Dashidorzhieva, Ksenia Perova and Inna Stepanova held their nerves in the shoot-off winning it by 25-23 margin. Strong southern winds of about 37 km/h at the historical Samba Street made matters worse for both the teams but it was the Indians who were affected the most to finish sixth. "We tried our best, and all of us gave 100 per cent but it's really disappointing to lose this way, once again. It was very windy was kind of blowing away us," Deepika said blaming it on the wind. "We tried our level best and were shooting confidently but somehow we missed the crucial points. It was simply our not day. It was a close match and could have gone either away. It's very hard to digest the loss. The wind was blowing our equipment away and was difficult to target the centre," Deepika reasoned.
Nita distributes medals
Newly-elected International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Nita Ambani today distributed the medals to women's 400m freestyle podium finishers at the Rio Games here to become the first Indian woman to do the honours at an Olympic victory ceremony.
laxmirani out
India's archer laxmirani Majhi bowed out of the women's individual event, beaten 101-108 by Slovakian Alexandra longova at the Rio Olympics here on Monday. laxmirani trailed for the very beginning of the contest and lost three of the four rounds, eventually going down 25-27, 26-28, 26-26, 24-27. She began the contest nervously and notched up only 25 points out of 30 in the first round, giving longova advantage. The Slovakian scored 27 in the first round to take a two point lead. The Slovakian steadily extended her advantage over the 27-year-old Indian as the match went on. She scored 28 out of a possible 30 in the second round whereas laxmirani managed only 26. The Jharkhand-born West Bengal based archer managed to hold the gap in the third round where both the archers scored 26 each. laxmirani needed big scores in the fourth round to stretch the match to the fifth round. But nerves got the better off her as she failed to hit the perfect core of 10, managing only 24 out of 30.