India's veteran archer Deepika Kumari has finally found her form at the Paris Olympics. She has qualified for the round of 16 in the women's archery event winning back-to-back matches in rounds of 64 and 32. It was a tough battle for her in the round of 64 beating Estonia's Reena Parnat as the game went down the wire to the shoot-off.
After the regular five sets, both Deepika and Reena ended with 5 points each and then the winner was decided with a shoot-off. Deepika managed to score 9 while Reena could only bag 8 for the former to qualify to the next round.
In the round of 32, Netherlands' Roeffen Quinty locked horns against Deepika and it was a comfortable outing for the latter. Deepika brought all her experience into the game to win the first set 29-28 hitting 10 twice. Roefeen made a good comeback to win the second set. But her first shot in the third set yielded 0 in the third set and she could never recover from that blow.
Deepika comfortably won the third and fourth sets to reach six points and qualified for the round of 16. She will now face Germany's Michelle Kroppen on August 3 (Saturday) at 1:52 PM IST. For the unversed, Kroppen won the bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics in the team event.
Meanwhile, on the same day, India's Bhajan Kaur will also be in action in the round of 16. She will be locking horns against Indonesia's Diananda Choirunisa who is playing at the Olympic Games for the first time. She won the bronze medal in the mixed team event in Archery at the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2022. Kaur and Diananda's match is scheduled at 2:05 PM IST on Saturday.
