Tokyo Olympics: Archer Deepika Kumari finishes 9th in women's individual ranking round

Indian ace archer and world no. 1 Deepika Kumari reaches 1/32 eliminations after finishing in the 9th position at the women's individual ranking round on Friday. The competition unfolded before the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics.

Competing in lane 47A, Deepika started off the day by hitting a 56 in round 1 and followed up with 55 in round 2, staying at the 10th position. A poor 51 in the fourth round placed her in the 14th position. However, she quickly recovered with a brilliant 59 points in round 5.

The Korean archer An San maintained her lead throughout the individual ranking round, she remained 10 points ahead of Deepika after round 5. Picking up 57 points in round 6 further took Deepika (334) to the fourth position after the end of the first half, behind An (345), another Korean Minhee Jang (339) and USA's Mackenzie Brown (336).

The second half began with the 27-year-old Indian shooting 55 in round 1, retaining the fourth position. A tight competition ensued with Deepika finding herself in the 8th position after hitting a lower 53 in round 2. She followed it up with X-X-10-10-9-7 — a total of 56 in round 3 of the second half, taking herself up to the seventh position.

She ranked up another 58 to make it to sixth place after round 4 of the second half and followed it up with 53 in round 5. Another 54 points in round 6 of the second half led Deepika to finish at the 9th position with 663 points.

"I feel my performance was good as well as bad...it was in between I would say," Deepika said to PTI.

On her slip-up in the final six sets, she said: "I don't know why it was like that; I was trying to control my shots so that I could play better," she said.

Deepika's biggest challenge is likely to be in the last eight where she might run into San who is making her Olympic debut. Two years after she lost at the same venue to San at the 'Tokyo 2020 Test Event' here, Deepika would look to avenge her final defeat.

"I'm talking to myself, I'm controlling my emotions and trying to make myself better and better. "I want to show my best performance here and I will show that in my next rounds," Deepika vowed to come back strong.

The qualifying round results are used to seed the athletes and nations for the individual, mixed team and team competitions, deciding their opponents in the competition. Archers shoot 72 arrows at the target set 70 metres away, in 12 series of six arrows. They are ranked from highest to lowest at the end of the round.

An archer's position after the ranking round becomes their seeding for match play.

The archery heavyweights from Korea An San (680), her compatriots Minhee Jang (677) and Chaeyoung Kang (675) finished in the top three places.

Deepika will now face Bhutan's Karma Bhu in the Round of 64 on July 28. Incidentally, Karma is Bhutan's first-ever archer to win a direct berth at the Olympics.

The Games will officially open this evening.