M A I N   N E W S

Paes, Bhupathi move up
M.R. Mishra

Athens, August 16
Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi launched their campaign with a bang at the Olympic men’s doubles tennis event by defeating singles world number 2 Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish of the USA in straight sets in the first round under windy conditions today.

The ‘Indian Express’ rolled over the American duo 7-6 (7-5), 6-3 in 90 minutes to line up for a potentially explosive second round meeting with Wimbledon champion and world number one Roger Federer and Yves Allegro of Switzerland for a place in the quarter-finals.

More encouraging news came from the badminton courts where Nikhil Kanetkar won his first round men’s singles tie against Sergio Llopis of Spain 15-7, 13-15, 15-13 in 66 minutes. The left handed Indian shuttler set up a second round meeting with sixth seed Peter Gade of Denmark for a place in the last eight.

The convincing victory posted by the Lee-Hesh duo, striving to attain the heights which brought it two Grand Slam titles five years ago, and Kanetkar’s win brightened up the Indian camp somewhat which saw reverses dampening its spirit in the first three days of competition.

“We knew all along that it will be a tough match and were quite prepared. We were quite confident that if we play well, we can beat them. We just had to keep our composure,” Paes said after the match.

Paes and Bhupathi were never unduly worried by the big serves of their US opponents, particularly Roddick who is currently ranked number two in the singles in the world.

“We knew that they are big servers, but at the same time Mahesh and myself have played a lot of matches together and we knew how to go about. I am glad that we could do it and move to the second round,” Paes said.

India, however, tasted defeat in the shooting range where 21-year-old Abhinav Bindra encountered finals blues to finish seventh with 694.6 points after being poised for a bronze medal going into the ten-shot 10 m air rifle finals with a tally of 597 in the preliminaries.

His teammate Gagan Narang could not even make it to the eight-strong finals. He was way off the mark in the preliminaries to end joint 12th with 593 points.

The day started on a dismal note for the Indians with the elimination from the individual men’s archery event of armyman Majhi Sawaiyan at the Panathinaiko Stadium.

Majhi, who finished 22nd in the ranking rounds held before the competition, was beaten quite convincingly by American Vic Wunderle, a two-time world junior champion, 145-128 in the first round of the event.

It was a disappointing start to the day’s proceedings from the same arena which saw women archers Reena Kumari and Sumangala Sharma advancing to the pre-quarters in convincing fashion yesterday morning.

Paes said he and Bhupathi focused on holding serve and hope for mistakes from the rivals.

“Our strategy was to hold serve and hope for one or two errors from them. The conditions here were very difficult with gusty winds blowing.

“Roddick is a very good singles player but we are doubles specialists and know each other like the back of our hands.

“Now it is one down and three to go,” the multiple grand slam champion said.

Paes, curiously, did not talk of winning the gold but seemed to have set his eyes on the minimum, the bronze. “I have won the singles bronze (in Atlanta in 1996). Now I want to win the doubles bronze,” he said. — PTI