Ace Indian archer Deepika Kumari finished a creditable ninth after the women’s individual ranking round, notching up a total of 663 points, on the opening day of the Tokyo Olympics at the Yumenoshima Ranking Field, the venue of the archery competitions, on Friday.
On a day when the Olympic record of 673 points in the qualification round was broken by the top four archers — South Korean trio of An San (680), Jang Minhee (677) and Kang Chae Young (675) and Mexico’s Alejandra Valencia (674) — Deepika endured a challenging day as she kept moving up and down the leaderboard throughout the event.
All four top archers surpassed the long-standing record of Lina Herasymenko of Ukraine, who had shot 673 points at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
South Korea also smashed the team event record — where the scores of three archers of a county are combined – aggregating 2032 points, ahead of Mexico (1976 points) and USA (1970 points).
The 27-year-old Deepika, winner of a hattrick of gold medals at the in the World Cup Stage 3 in Paris late last month which helped her reclaim the No.1 spot in the world, has now been paired with Bhutan’s Karma in the elimination round (round of 32).
