2nd Asian Grand Prix archery: Five Indians in medal round

Patna, May 23, 2009
Five Indians made it to the medal round in the individual section of the second Asian Grand Prix archery tournament at Tehran on Friday. Three Indians, Tarundeep Rai (men’s recurve), L. Haridas Singh (men’s compound) and Sweety Kumari (women’s compound) moved into the final while two, Muni Ram Tirkey (men’s recurve) and Sushma (women’s recurve) reached the bronze medal play-off.

Tarundeep Rai, seeded second, will take on fourth seed Milad Vaziri Teymoorlooei of Iran for the gold medal. The Indian army archer, who missed the individual bronze medal by a whisker in the 2005 Madrid World Championship, showed enough touch and class in this meet. He had the scores of 109, 106 and 106 in the three rounds he played so far and would look to avenge his compatriot Muni Ram Tirkey’s defeat in the semifinals in the hands of Milad.

The Iranian had defeated top seed Muni Ram Tirkey in the semifinals 109-106. The semifinal loss pushed Tirkey against sixth seed Nadar M. of Iran in the bronze medal play-off. The other two, Kapil and K. Shiv Shankar, lost in the quarterfinals.

Fifth-seeded Indian L. Haridas Singh will come up against third seed Hungarian Robert Bojti in the men’s compound division final. Singh scored 116 in the first round, 112 in the second and in the semifinals he downed top seed Hamzeh Nekooi of Iran 109-107.

The other Indians, L. Chinglensana Luwang (seed No. 2), Amrinder Singh (eighth seed) and Arun Sharma (11th) were eliminated early.

Sweety Kumari was the best among four Indian women compound archers. She ensured a place in the final against second seed Seyedeh Vida Halimian Avval of Iran. The other three disappointed with miserable display with Manjudha Soy (2nd seed) losing to Leila Sakhaeifar of Iran in the quarterfinals 102-108 while Vrushali Gorle lost to Sweety at the same stage 99-104. Sakro Besra lost to the second seed also in the quarterfinals at 100-111.

Sushma, the sixth-seeded Indian reached the women’s recurve semifinals where she lost to ninth ranked Farideh Mirzaei of Iran 91-95. Sushma will play 10th seed Zahara Nemati of Iran for the bronze medal. Reena Kumari (top seed), Olympian V. Pranitha (second seed) and Punya Prabha (third seed) all lost in the second round.
Source: Press release from www.indianarchery.info