The Hindu : Favourites call the shots

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 09, 2003

Sport

Sport - Archery

Favourites call the shots

By Our Special Correspondent

KOLKATA MARCH 8. Favourites ruled the roost on the second day of the second National- ranking archery prize money circuit tournament at the SAI, Eastern Centre here on Saturday. Muni Ram Tirkey of Army, Satyadev Prasad and Kailash Sharma of Uttar Pradesh, Shivnath Nagesia of Andhra Pradesh and Limba Ram of Rajasthan stayed ahead of the field with sparkling shows.

Dola Banerjee of Jharkhand led the women's field winning all her ten league encounters. She was followed by Naohmi Laloo of Jharkhand with eight wins and Chekrovolu Swuro of AP and Keziengunuo Theunu of Jharkhand with six wins out of 10.

The Archery Association of India (AAI), to infuse keener competition and consistent performance from the archers, introduced a league system in the circuit meets through which two groups of 16 men archers would compete in a round robin basis to gain ranking from 1 to 32. Thereafter the 32 archers would go into Olympic round knockout competition to decide the winner.

Similarly, on the distaff side, 16 archers, selected after the FITA round competition, played in a round-robin basis to rank 1 to 16 before moving into the knockout phase.

In the league phase, each archer was allowed to shoot 18 arrows over the distance of 70m. Tirkey won nine out of 10 league match-ups with a highest score of 172 out of possible 180 against Mangal Singh of AP. Kailash had won 10 out of 11 with a highest of 168 while National champion Nagesia won nine out of 11 with 168 as his highest. Limba and Satyadev Prasad won eight and seven rounds respectively with each registering 173 as their highest. While Limba had it against Kapil, Prasad's score came against Rajesh Hansda of Army. Five more round would be held on Sunday morning before the knockout competition would get underway in the final afternoon. First 16 men and 8 women archers would stand to gain cash prizes.

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