Deepika settles for silver; other lead archers bite dust

Jamshedpur: CWG gold medallist Deepika Kumari had to be content with a silver even as many star

archers including Jayanta Talukdar and Tarundeep Rai returned empty handed from the archery event of the National Games on Thursday. Local girl Deepika lost the individual recurve event final 2-3 to Assam`s Prativa Boro at JRD Tata Sports complex. Seema Verma of Jharkhand won the bronze medal after defeating Laxmi Rani Manjhi. The men`s individual recurve gold medal went to West Bengal`s M R Tirkey, who stunned SSCB`s Vishwas 3-2. Sanjay Boro of Assam bagged the bronze medal deafting Pawan Xalxo. In the compound individual event, Sunita Rani of Punjab and Ashishek Verma of Delhi defeated V Jyothi Surekha (AP) and Ritul Chatterjee (AP) in the women and men`s events to claim gold. Namita Yadav of Jharkhand defeated Punjab`s Rupinder Kaur and C Srither (SSCB) got the better of Rajasthan`s Nand Kishor Rawat to claim bronze in the women and men`s events. However, it was disappointing day for may star archers such as Jayanta Talukdar, Tarundeep Rai, Mangal Singh Champia and Jhanu Hansda as they were eliminated early from their events. Talukdar, 2009 FITA world cup (stage II) gold medallist, moved into the semifinal after defeating Beyant Singh 4-0 but crashed out of the competiton following defeat against teammate Xalxo. Talukdar put up good contest against Xalxo but missed the target when it mattered most in the best of five sets. Another major upset in the men`s recurve individual event was elimination of Tarundeep (SSCB) in the quarter-finals. He lost to Sanjay Boro (Assam), who eventually lost to Vishwas. Champia, Atanu Das and Kapil (UP) also lost their respective matches. While Champia lost to Priyank (UP), Das bit the dust against his former Tata Archery Academy mate Adonda Raju (WB). Kapil went down to Thupuvoyi Swiro (Nagaland) in the quarter-finals. In the women`s individual compound event, CWG team bronze medallists team Jhanu Handa, Bheigyabati Chanu (Jharkhand) and Gagandeep Kaur lost their respective matches against Sunita Rani (Punjab), Rupinder Kaur (Punjab) and Namita Yadav (Jharkhand) in the quarter-final stage respectively.