Woman archer Laxmirani out of individual event at Rio

India's archer Laxmirani Majhi bowed out of the women's individual event, beaten 101-108 by Slovakian Alexandra Longova at the Rio Olympics here on Monday.

Laxmirani trailed for the very beginning of the contest and lost three of the four rounds, eventually going down 25-27, 26-28, 26-26, 24-27.

She began the contest nervously and notched up only 25 points out of 30 in the first round, giving Longova advantage. The Slovakian scored 27 in the first round to take a two point lead.

The Slovakian steadily extended her advantage over the 27-year-old Indian as the match went on.

She scored 28 out of a possible 30 in the second round whereas Laxmirani managed only 26.

The Jharkhand-born West Bengal based archer managed to hold the gap in the third round where both the archers scored 26 each.

Laxmirani needed big scores in the fourth round to stretch the match to the fifth round.

But nerves got the better off her as she failed to hit the perfect core of 10 in any of her three shots, managing only 7,8 and 9 to post a low score of 24 out of 30.

That virtually sealed her fate. But still Longova showed no signs of complacency to score 27 with a perfect 10 in her first attempt of the round to finalise a comprehensive victory.

--IANS

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