Final Results

Indians gain 3 gold, 4 silver medals

The 16-member Indian archery contingent bagged three gold and four silver medals at the the second Asian Grand Prix meet at Tehran on Saturday (May23, 2009).

According to information received in Kolkata on Monday, the men's recurve team of Tarundeep Rai, Muni Ram Tirkey and Kapil, took the gold medal beating Iran 217-211 in the final. Punya Prabha, V. Pranitha and Reena Kumari the best in the women's recurve team final defeating Iran 198-194 in the final.

Compound archer L. Haridas Singh earned India the third gold medal in the individual event when he annihilated Hungary's Robert Bojti in the tie breaker after the two tied 109-109 in the final. Singh shot a 10 as against Bojti's 9 in the tie-breaker.

The men and women compound teams lost to Iran in the final. The men lost 220-227 and the women went down 207-208. Olympian Tarundeep Rai, perhaps the most experienced in the field, could get only a silver medal losing to Iran's Milad Vaziri Teymoorlooei at 107-108 in the men's recurve individual event final.

Compound women archer Sweety Kumari too failed in the final going down to Seyedeh Vida Halimian Avval of Iran 102-108 to settle for silver.

Tirkey and Sushma (both individual recurve) lost to Nadar M. and Zahara Nemati of Iran respectively in the bronze medal play-off. All other medals went to host Iran which emerged the best in the four-day tournament attended by six nations and 60 archers.

Five Indians in medal contention

Five Indians made it to the medal round of the individual section of the second Asian Grand Prix archery tournament at Tehran on Friday. Three Indians, Tarundeep Rai (men's recurve), L. Haridas Singh (men's compound) and Sweety Kumari (women's compound) moved into the final while two, Muni Ram Tirkey (men's recurve) and Sushma (women's recurve) reached the bronze medal play-off.

Tarundeep Rai, seeded second, will take on fourth seed Milad Vaziri Teymoorlooei of Iran for the gold medal. The Indian army archer, who missed the individual bronze medal by a whisker in the 2005 Madrid World Championship, showed enough touch and class in this meet. He had scores of 109, 106 and 106 in the three round he played so far and would look to avenge his compatriot Muni Ram Tirkey's defeat in the semifinals in the hands of Milad.

The Iranian had defeated top seed Muni Ram Tirkey in the semifinals 109-106. The semifinal loss pushed Tirkey against sixth seed Nadar M. of Iran in the bronze medal play-off. The other two, Kapil and K. Shiv Shankar, lost in the quarterfinals.

Fifth-seeded Indian L. Haridas Singh will come up against third seed Hungarian Robert Bojti in the men's compound division final. Singh scored 116 in the first round, 112 in the second and in the semifinals he downed top seed Hamzeh Nekooi of Iran 109-107.

The other Indians, L. Chinglensana Luwang (seed No. 2), Amrinder Singh (eighth seed) and Arun Sharma (11th) were eliminated early.

Sweety Kumari was the best among four Indian women compound archers. She ensured a place in the final against second seed Seyedeh Vida Halimian Avval of Iran. The other three disappointed with miserable display with Manjudha Soy (2nd seed) losing to Leila Sakhaeifar of Iran in the quarterfinals 102-108 while Vrushali Gorle lost to Sweety at the same stage 99-104. Sakro Besra lost to the second seed also in the quarterfinals at 100-111.

Sushma, the sixth-seeded Indian reached the women's recurve semifinals where she lost to ninth ranked Farideh Mirzaei of Iran 91-95. Sushma will play 10th seed Zahara Nemati of Iran for the bronze medal. Reena Kumari (top seed), Olympian V. Pranitha (second seed) and Punya Prabha (third seed) all lost in the second round.

Indians to the fore in qualifying round

The 16-member Indian archery contingent made a clean sweep by occupying the top position in all the four categories - Recurve men and women and Compound men and women - on the opening day of the second Asian Grand Prix archery tournament at Tehran on Wednesday.

The Indian men's recurve team, comprising M. R. Tirkey, Tarundeep Rai and Kapil totalled 1967 points to take the first place after competitions were held in two 70m distances as qualifying round in which each archer had to shoot 36 arrows over 70m twice for a total of 720 points.

Tirkey's 659 points was the best among Indians and was followed by Rai (658) and Kapil (650). Fourth member K. Shivshankar scored 614.

The Indian trio of Reena Kumari (641), V. Pranitha (619) and Punya Prabha (613) helped the Indian women team to reach 1873 point which gave it the top spot. The fourth member Sushma came up with 600 points.

In the men's compound section, M. Chinglensana Luwang (686), L. Haridas Singh (683) and Amrinder Singh (674) enabled India top with 2043 points. Fourth member Arun Sharma scored 662.

In the women's section, Manjudha Soy (658), Vrushali Gorle (638) and Sakro Besra (637), who formed the team, enabled India take the top spot with 1933 points. Sweety Kumari, who was the fourth member, scored 656.

Archers from six countries, host Iran, Iraq, India, Syria, Bangladesh, Nepal and Hungary are in the competition of the four-day meet. This is the second of the five Grand Prix series planned by the Asian Archery Federation. New Delhi is set to host the fourth of the series in September.