Women's archery team, rower enter quarters

Beijing: The Indian trio of Laishram Bombayla Devi, Dola Banerjee and Pranitha Vardineni did enough to ensure that the women's team, courtesy its sixth place finish in the ranking rounds, got a bye in the first round of the Olympic archery event in Beijing on Saturday.

Bombayla (637), Dola (633) and Pranitha (627) finished 22nd, 31st and 37th respectively in Saturday's ranking round and their aggregated tally of 1897 helped India finish among top six sides, who got a bye.

The eves would now take on hosts China (1916), who finished third, straight in the quarter-finals.

In the individual section on Tuesday, in-form Bombayla will face lowly Iwona Marcinkiewicz of Poland, who finished 43rd with a score of 620, while experienced Dola takes on Marie-Pier Beaudet (628) of Canada, who finished 34th.

Youngest of the lot, Pranitha will have a tough task to get past Australian Jane Waller, who shot 634 to finish 28th.

Team manager KS Kang was naturally elated with the way things panned out for the archers and said the camp was quite upbeat after the performance of the women's team.

"It was a quality show by the archers. Though Olympic is a different ball game altogether, we are happy with them," he said.

He heaped praise on Pranitha for not getting overwhelmed by the occasion and putting up a decent show.

"It was amazing to see a greenhorn like her rising to the occasion," he said.

Kang, however, admitted that lot would depend on how the seniors respond to the challenge on Tuesday.

"I expect both Bombayla and Dola to live up to expectations. Bombayla has been consistent, while Dola has just regained her confidence and can be unbeatable on her day. Besides, Dola brings in a lot of experience to the side and this augurs well for the team," he added.

In rowing, too, there was good news where Bajrang Lal Thakar qualified for the quater-finals in the men's single sculls event.

Thakar finished third in his heat, clocking 1minute 57.82 seconds and finished about 16 seconds behind Ondrej Synek of the Czech Republic who finished first.

Thakar will now try to move ahead in the next round on Monday.