Tarundeep wins 1st round, Banerjee, Talukdar, Swuro exit

Indian archers continued to be off target in the Olympics as Rahul Banerjee, Jayanta Talukdar and Chekrovolu Swuro today crashed out in the men's and women's individual events respectively at the historic Lord's Cricket Ground here.

India's Tarundeep Rai beat his Cuban opponent J C Stevens via shoot-off to enter round two -- which will be held later in the evening.

Rahul convincingly blanked Mongolia's Jantsan Gantugs 6-0 in the first round only to lose 3-7 to Rafael Dobrowlski of Poland in the second round.

Tarundeep held his nerves to trail 1-5 and then equalise winning the fourth and fifth set as he took the encounter into golden shoot-off. In the shoot-off, the Sikkimese archer hit a 9 while his Cuban opponent could only manage a distant 8.

Earlier, in the morning, Talukdar was no match for his American rival Jacob Wukie, who easily pocketed the encounter 6-0, while Swuro went down fighting to Jennifer Nichols of USA 6-5 in the one arrow shoot-off after the scores were tied at 5-5.

In individual events, which is decided on best of five sets (three arrows each), one who wins a set irrespective of the margin gets two points.

Swuro was leading 5-3 and could have clinched the issue but for the bout of nerves that made her fire the arrow in a wayward manner.

The Indian needed to hit a 10 in order to clinch the tie but the nervous Nagamese archer could only manage a six as the score was tied at 5-5.

In the shoot-off, the American scored a nine, while Swuro could just about hit an eight.

Earlier, Talukdar was a trifle off-colour and lacked the consistency as he started poorly with a score of 22 (8, 5 and 9) in the first set, while Wukie hit 27 (8, 10 and 9).

The Indian archer paid the price for a poor score of 5 in the first set and could not really recover from that lapse of concentration.