Dola Banerjee finishes seventh in selection trial

Kolkata: Olympian Dola Banerjee slumped to a poor seventh place, even as her Railways colleague Rimil Biruly made the cut by finishing on top in selection trial for the season-ending 17th Asian Archery Championship to be held at Tehran from October 18-24.

Meanwhile, Athens Olympian and Asian Games silver medallist Tarundeep Rai shot 5374 to top the men`s recurve selection trial ahead of Atanu Das and Rahul Banerjee as the trio were picked for the premier biennial Asian tournament. In the women`s recurve section, where only one slot was vacant, Rimil finished first with 5196 points to seal the berth after a four-day trial at SAI Complex here. Indian stalwart Dola, recovering from an injury, continued with her poor form as she managed to earn just 5009 points, which meant a seventh-place finish. Former Olympians -- Vardhineni Praneetha (4928) and Reena Kumari (4922) -- finished eighth and ninth respectively. The compound section identified a full set of four archers each. The three men`s recurve archers will join Jayanta Talukdar now. Rimil, meanwhile, will be the fourth member in the women`s recurve team that already has three Olympic quota archers in Laishram Bombayla Devi, Deepika Kumari and Chekrovolu Swuro. India had won two gold (individual and team compound), two silver (men`s and women`s team recurve) and two bronze medals (individual men`s recurve and individual women`s compound) in the last edition of the meet held in Bali (Indonesia) in 2009. For the first time, the trials carried a prize money of Rs 4 lakh, which was given to the top eight places in men`s and women`s compound section. The selected archers: Men (Recurve): Tarundeep Rai (5374 points; SSCB), Atanu Das (5373; SPSB) and Rahul Banerjee (5344; Rlys). Men (Compound): Ch Jignas (5620; SSCB), Ritul Chatterjee (5577; AP), M Chinglen Sana (5561; SSCB) and Kh Ratan Singh (5554; SSCB). Women (Recurve): Rimil Biruly (5196; Rlys). Women (Compound): Namita Yadav (5469, Rlys), Jhano Hansdah (5461, Jha), Manjudha Soy (5411, Rlys) and V Jyothi Surekha (5407, AP). PTI