Off mark: Manu misses her third, Deepika first

Rohit Mahajan in Paris

Shooter Manu Bhaker became nervous going for her third medal; archer Deepika Kumari cracked under pressure of her own making as she chased her first, and two more chapters were added to India’s sob story of near-misses at the Olympics.
Saturday morning at Paris was cooler than the past few days, and the Indians at the Athletes’ Village, equipped with new ACs, may have slept better than before.
Deepika wouldn’t sleep better tonight, despite the ACs, because she missed what she later termed her best-ever chance to win an Olympic medal.

Deepika (30) is in her fourth Olympics; in the quarterfinals today, she had a great chance to make the medal round — she won the first and the third sets against Suhyeon Nam of South Korea — and then cracked under pressure. Having scored a poor six with her second arrow in the second set — after delaying the release — Deepika became nervous and overcompensated and released the second arrow in the fourth set too early. A seven, a terrible seven, and there was no coming back from there. Suhyeon, who later won the silver, came back from 2-4 down to win 6-4, knocking out Deepika, adding more tears to the Indian’s reservoir of Olympic sorrow.
Earlier, Bhajan Kaur, who turns 19 this month, lost in the pre-quarterfinals to Indonesia’s Diananda Choirunisa, beaten in a shootoff, leaving only Deepika in the fray.
“It’s the weight of own expectations… Those were bad two shots and I feel like I have gifted her the match,” Deepika said. Manu was similarly crestfallen, but she has the satisfaction of winning two Olympic medals, a finalist in the third. Her loss in the women’s 25m sports pistol final was even more excruciating, more dispiriting than Deepika’s — for we’ve got used to seeing Deepika lose, and in Paris, we’d got to seeing Manu win.

Manu (22) was in the reckoning for some time in the final today, before one very poor round of shots held her back; in the 25m sports pistol final, precision is the key — only scores over 10.2 are counted as a hit, anything below 10.2 is a miss.
Manu started poorly, with two hits and three misses in the first series of five shots; 4, 4, 3, 5, 4, 4 saw her shoot up the charts — and then came a disastrous 2 in the eighth series; at 28 points, she was tied with Veronika, a shootoff was resorted to. Manu shot a 2 again, Veronika a 3, and Manu’s dream of a third medal ended.
Manu, happy and sad, said two medals at the Olympics wasn’t a bad return. “Yes, if you put it that way, yes, I am glad that I got two medals,” she said. “But right now, I am not very happy. Fourth place is not a very good place.”