Archery
Indian men's recurve team exit in quarters of Olympic Qualifier
Indian men's recurve team lost their quarterfinal match at Final Olympic Qualifier but still in hunt for ranking quota.

Indian recurve men's team lost out in quarterfinal of final Olympic Qualifier
The Indian men's recurve archery team, comprising Dhiraj Boomadevara, Tarundeep Rai, and Pravin Jadhav suffered a heartbreaking 4-5 defeat to Mexico in the quarterfinals of the Final Olympic Qualifier in Antalya, Turkiye, on Saturday.
They entered the elimination round as the first-seeded team but failed to progress in the semifinals to miss out on direct qualification for the Paris Olympics. They shot a total of 2018 points in the ranking round to grab this first seed.
India received a bye in the pre-quarterfinals and then took followed it up with a dominating 6-0 victory against Luxembourg in the pre-quarterfinals but then, could not cross the quarterfinal hurdle despite leading 4-0 at the end of two rounds.
The team crumbled in pressure and shot two average rounds of 55 each and the match went into shoot-off. Both teams scored a poor 26 in the shoot-off but the Mexicans had one shot in the X-ring and hence they came out as the winner of the match.
Dhiraj again proved to be the star man of India as he maintained a very good average of 9.44 in this pre-quarterfinal match. He also showed consistency and didn't shoot a single 8-pointer throughout the match.
Meanwhile, Tarundeep (9.22) and Pravin (9.11) shot one 8-pointer each which hampered the chances of the team. Matias Grande of Mexico was the best archer of the match and had an excellent average of 9.56.
Despite the setback, the Indian men's recurve team is very much in contention for a quota spot for the Paris Olympics through world rankings. There are two ranking quota spots in the team event for the highest-ranked non-qualified teams.
The Indian men's team currently ranked second in the world, is in the driver's seat for winning one of those quota spots. The only team ranked above India is South Korea, which has already secured a quota for their team.
Indian archers have only one quota spot so far in the forthcoming Paris Olympics, which was won by Dhiraj Boomadevara in the individual men's category.
Earlier, the Indian women's team also missed on quota spot in this tournament, losing their pre-quarterfinal match to Ukraine. However, all three Indian female archers will now be in action for Individual quota matches on Sunday.