Asian Games archery: Deepika scrapes through to semi-finals

GUANGZHOU - India’s ace archer Deepika Kumari scraped past Tan Ya Ting of Chinese Taipei to move into the semi-finals of the women’s individual recurve event at the Asian Games here Tuesday.

Deepika, a gold medallist at the Delhi Commonwealth Games, won a close battle 6-4 (26-29, 28-26, 28-29, 28-27, 29-28) against Tan in their quarter-final match at the Aoti Archery Range.

The match was tied at 4-4 at the end of four rounds. Deepika shot 29 in the shoot-off round. The Taipei archer needed a perfect ten from the final arrow to pull it through, but managed an eight and Deepika emerged the winner.

Deepika will face the winner of other quarter-final between top-seed Okhee Yun of South Korea and Farida Tukebayeva of Kazkahstan for a place in the last four.

It was Tan, who defeated another Indian, Rimil Buriuly, 6-2 (22-27, 21-27, 28-27, 25-26) in the pre-quarterfinals.

Deepika got the better of Erwina Safitri of Indonesia 7-3 (28-36, 26-26, 27-24, 30-28, 26-22) in pre-quarterfinals.

The 16-year-old Deepika defeated Rand Almashhadani of Iraq 5-1 in the first round. She was ranked seventh in the qualification rounds while Rimil finished at 18th position.

Veteran Dola Bannerjee and Bombayala Devi failed to qualify for the elimination rounds.

The women’s team comprising Deepika, Dola and Rimil won its maiden Asian Games medal by edging Chines Taipei in the bronze medal play-off Monday.