Deepika settles for silver; other lead archers bite dust

Jamshedpur, Feb 24 (PTI) CWG gold medallist DeepikaKumari had to be content with a silver even as many stararchers including Jayanta Talukdar and Tarundeep Rai returnedempty handed from the archery event of the National Games heretoday.

Local girl Deepika lost the individual recurve eventfinal 2-3 to Assam''s Prativa Boro at JRD Tata Sports complex.

Seema Verma of Jharkhand won the bronze medal afterdefeating Laxmi Rani Manjhi.

The men''s individual recurve gold medal went to WestBengal''s M R Tirkey, who stunned SSCB''s Vishwas 3-2. SanjayBoro of Assam bagged the bronze medal deafting Pawan Xalxo.

In the compound individual event, Sunita Rani of Punjaband Ashishek Verma of Delhi defeated V Jyothi Surekha (AP) andRitul Chatterjee (AP) in the women and men''s events to claimgold.

Namita Yadav of Jharkhand defeated Punjab''s Rupinder Kaurand C Srither (SSCB) got the better of Rajasthan''s Nand KishorRawat to claim bronze in the women and men''s events.

However, it was disappointing day for may star archerssuch as Jayanta Talukdar, Tarundeep Rai, Mangal Singh Champiaand Jhanu Hansda as they were eliminated early from theirevents.

Talukdar, 2009 FITA world cup (stage II) gold medallist,moved into the semifinal after defeating Beyant Singh 4-0 butcrashed out of the competiton following defeat againstteammate Xalxo.

Talukdar put up good contest against Xalxo but missed thetarget when it mattered most in the best of five sets.

Another major upset in the men''s recurve individual eventwas elimination of Tarundeep (SSCB) in the quarter-finals. Helost to Sanjay Boro (Assam), who eventually lost to Vishwas.

Champia, Atanu Das and Kapil (UP) also lost theirrespective matches. While Champia lost to Priyank (UP), Dasbit the dust against his former Tata Archery Academy mateAdonda Raju (WB).

Kapil went down to Thupuvoyi Swiro (Nagaland) in thequarter-finals.

In the women''s individual compound event, CWG team bronzemedallists team Jhanu Handa, Bheigyabati Chanu (Jharkhand) andGagandeep Kaur lost their respective matches against SunitaRani (Punjab), Rupinder Kaur (Punjab) and Namita Yadav(Jharkhand) in the quarter-final stage respectively.

Sunita defeated Yadav in the semi-final while Rupinderlost to V Jyothi Surekha (AP).