Rio 2016: Bull’s eye bombayla Devi!

Experienced India archer Laishram Bombayla Devi advanced to the pre-quarter-finals of the women’s individual recurve competition after defeating Chinese Taipei’s Lin Shih-Chia at the Rio Olympics here on Wednesday.

Playing in her third Olympics, the 31-year-old from Manipur, who finished 24th in the ranking round, dished out a dominating show to get the better of Lin 6-2, in the 1/16 elimination here.

Earlier in the 1/32 elimination round, the Indian had rallied her way to beat Austria’s Laurence Baldauff 6-2.

Otherwise, India’s earnest wait for their first medal after four fruitless days continued on Day 5 with strong pistol shooting hope Jitu Rai crashing out of his pet 50m event without making the final.

Jitu, winner of the gold medal in the same event in both the Common-wealth and Asian Games two years ago, showed rare signs of nerves going into the sixth and final series of 10 shots in the qualification round and was way off the mark to end up 12th with a total of 554 out of 600.

Fellow pistol shooter Prakash Nanjappa performed even more dismally to finish 25th out of 41 shooters with 547.

Judoka Avtar Singh too crashed out after losing to Refugee Olympic team’s Misenga Popole in the second round of the men’s 90 kg elimination Round of 32.

The 24-year-old Popole gathered a point through Yoko, which is awarded for a throw that is ‘partially lacking’ in two of the three elements of an ippon: putting the opponent on his back, speed of throw, force of throw.

Avtar, on the other hand, was penalised twice for non-combativity, where a player does not attack enough, intentionally stepping out of bounds, play too defensively or puts a hand directly on the opponent’s face.

India’s weightlifting campaign ended in disappointment with Sathish Kumar Sivalingam finishing fourth in the men’s 77kg event Group B category, having lifted 148kg in snatch and 181kg in clean and jerk for a total of 329kg.