Olympics Qualifier: Bhajan Kaur seals Paris quota with gold

Antalya, June 16

Bhajan Kaur clinched India an Olympics quota in style, winning a gold medal at the ‘Archery In Paris Final Olympic Qualifier’ here today. The inexperienced Bhajan grabbed the limelight by stunning top seed Mobina Fallah of Iran without dropping a set to clinch the women’s individual recurve gold. The third seed showed exceptional shooting to go all the way, winning 6-2 (28-26, 29-29, 29-26, 29-29) in a one-sided final.

Her teammate Ankita Bhakat made a quarterfinal exit, but she also secured an Olympics quota by virtue of that last-eight entry. The individual quotas are allotted to the top-eight nations. Each country gets one individual quota. India thus have secured individual quotas in both men’s and women’s sections. Dhiraj Bommadevara had secured the men’s individual quota from the Asian qualifying leg earlier.

Bhajan, who got a bye into the Round of 32, started off by overcoming Urantungalag Bishindee of Mongolia 6-2 (29-27, 28-26, 26-29, 27-24).

She later dropped one set but got the better of Urska Cavic of Slovenia 7-3 (28-22, 29-18, 28-28, 26-27,27-24) to make the last-eight, where she outclassed Wioleta Myszor 6-0 (30-28, 27-24, 30-28), shooting two perfect sets.

It was Mobina who ousted Ankita in the quarters with a hard-fought 6-4 win (27-27, 28-27, 27-29, 27-27, 29-28).

In the semis, Bhajan toppled Alexandara Mirca 6-2 (27-26, 28-27, 26-27, 27-26).

Ankita was the first to enter the quarters and confirm the quota when she outplayed Gabrielle Monica Bidaure of Philippines in the last-16.

Ninth seed Ankita cruised to a 6-0 (26-23, 28-22, 28-23) win over her 40th-seeded rival in the pre-quarterfinals.

Deepika falters

Earlier, Deepika Kumari, who qualified for this event as the second seed, suffered an embarrassing opening round defeat to little known Yaylagul Ramazanova of Azerbaijan. The former world No. 1 won the opening two sets to lead 4-0, but her shooting went horribly wrong in the next two as she scored 23 and 24 points, landing five of her six arrows in the outer rings.

Yaylagul brought the scores level at 4-4. The Azerbaijan archer then won the fifth set with a solid display for a splendid 6-4 (26-28, 25-27, 23-26, 24-25, 27-29) win.