India men's recurve team fail to qualify for Rio

India will not have a men's archery team competing in Rio Olympics as it failed to book a berth in the quadrennial event through the Olympic qualifying tournament here on Thursday.

The top-seeded men's trio of Jayanta Talukdar, Atanu Das and Mangal Singh Champia lost to a lower-ranked Malaysian team 4-5 in the shoot-off in the quarter-finals after finishing at 27-28.

They needed to finish in the top three to qualify for the games in August but it was Champia's poor run of form which hindered their progress as they squandered a 2-0 lead.

Incidentally, Champia will be able to take part in the individual men's recurve event at Rio where he bagged a quota place in the World Championship in July last year.

However, considering his lack of form, Champia might miss out on the Rio bound squad when the Archery Association of India (AAI) sits to pick an individual member based on a separate trail.

The women's recurve team will have no such problems to deal with as they have already qualified for the Olympics last year through a tournament in Denmark.

--IANS

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