Indian men’s recurve team comprising Tarundeep Rai, Praveen Jadhav and Atandu Das booked a Tokyo Olympics berth after they qualified for the quarter-finals of the World Archery Championships with a 5-3 win over Canada in the second round game.

India made a great start to the game winning the first two sets by 56-55 and 57-56 respectively but were pegged back the Canadians who stormed back in the encounter with a 58-54 win in the third set.

With the tie at 4-2 in India’s favour the, men’s recurve side needed at least a tie to clinch the contest. India managed to hold their nerves and eked out a 57-57 scoreline to share the spoils in the fourth set and thus take the tie by a 5-3 margin.

South Korea, Kazakhstan, China, Great Britain, Australia, Netherlands and Chinese Taipei are the other teams that advanced to the quarter-finals along with India.

In compound archery, India’s women’s team entered the quarter-finals after a 236-226 win over France. However, compound archery isn’t part of the Olympics and thus the women’s team weren’t playing for the quotas.

Women miss out

Indian women’s recurve team suffered a shock defeat to Belarus in their second-round as they failed to secure an Olympic quota. The women lost 6-2 to the Europeans and had a torrid start to the tie when they scored just 42 and 44 in the first two sets respectively.

India pulled one set back winning the third by 53-51 but lost the final one by the same score.

The women’s team will have another chance of making the cut to the Tokyo Olympics at a qualification event in Berlin in June next year.