Rahul-Jayanta spice up natl archery

Kolkata, June 12 (UNI) The intense battle for a place in the Indian team for the 44th World outdoor archery championship began in right earnest at the SAI, Eastern Centre here today.

The hot and humid day produced some outstanding scores especially in the men's recurve section where Rahul Banerjee and Jayanta Talukdar, both of Steel Plant Sports Board, hogged the limelight.

The first FITA qualifying round also saw the emergence of Nagaland's veteran Chekrovolu Swuro to the fore pushing the hot favourite Dola Banerjee to the second place.

The three, Tarundeep Rai, Harish Chand Kerai and Priyank, who made it to the recently held World Cup third leg at Antalya (Turkey) bit the dust failing to get their acts together to finish way behind the field in a punishing day where the archers were asked to shoot 144 arrows over four distances of 90m, 70, 50 and 30m.

Talukdar, who was ranked World No. 1 for a brief while last year, slumped to a new low this season after a shoulder injury laid him low. He did badly at the Vijayawada National and gave a miss to the February National Games held at Guwahati.

One of the prominent members of the silver-medal winning Indian team at the last Worlds at Madrid in 2005, Talukdar seemed to have regained his touch finishing second behind inform Banerjee. Mangal Singh Champia too came back strongly after struggling for quite some time.

The archers will go through another gruelling day tomorrow in the second FITA qualifying round after which the archers will be ranked to play each other in two Olympic rounds on Thursday. The best eight will go through for the Super Eight Olympic round knockout that will decide the three Indians entries in each category for the Leipzig World Championship to be held from July 7 to 12.

The results: 1st FITA qualifying round, Recurve (men): 1. Rahul Banerjee (SPSB) 1345 points, 2. Jayanta Talukdar (SPAB) 1334, 3. Mangal Singh Champia (Rly) 1327.

Women: 1. Chekrovolu Swuro (Nag) 1327 points, 2. Dola Banerjee (Rly) 1315, 3. L. Bombayla Devi (Rly) 1309.

Compound (men): 1. Jayantilal Ninoma (Raj)&Naresh Damor (Rly) 1341 points each, 3. Ch. Lenin (AP) 1335.

Women: 1. Jhano Hansdah (Jhar) 1383 points, 2. Bheigyabati Chanu (Jhar) 1353, 3. Sumanlata Murmu (Jhar) 1338.

UNI