Paris Olympics: Dhiraj, Tarundeep power India men’s archery team to quarters

India Men’s archery team secured a direct entry into the Paris Olympics 2024 quarter-finals stage after finishing 4th in the rankings round.

And on top of some scintillating sets of performances from the likes of Dhiraj Bommadevara and Tarundeep Rai. On July 25, Dhiraj and Tarundeep stood out with their composed performance over a total of 72 shots, and sealed a fighting spot for glory for the Indian archery team in the highly-anticipated Paris Olympics.

Dhiraj Bommadevara, who started off in the 11th rank, staged a phenomenal turnaround by finishing in 5th after having dropped to the 40s during the initial stages of the first half. Tarundeep Rai was equally impressive with his set of chances and finished 14th. Meanwhile, India’s third archer Pravin Jadhav failed to get going and finished in 39th spot

Dhiraj struggles to get going

Tarundeep Rai’s first round saw a pretty subtle start after he managed a total of 55 points from his first 6 shots. He hit 2 ten pointers followed by three consecutive 9 pointers and then an 8. However, the second round was one of impressive tone by Tarundeep, which saw him push his score to a sum of 113 points with a bulls-eye, 3 back-to-back 10s and a double 9 pointers. This brought Tarundeep to a joint 16th rank on the leaderboard. Ultimately, it was Tarandeep who showed the most promising performance for India and ended the first half in 14th spot with a total of 337 points.

On the other hand, the most promising candidate for India, Dhiraj Bommadevara, had a similar slow start with a total of 57 points from his first round of 6 shots. Even in the second round, Dhiraj failed to make any significant impact with just 53 points more, and then 56 in the third. Despite starting off 11th ranked, Dhiraj’s first round performance brought him straight down to 36th. However, Dhiraj’s impressive 56 points from the 4th round, including three 10 pointers, sent him to the 27th spot.

It is after this moment that we saw Dhiraj bring out his A-game, and go on to hit 3 back-to-back bullsseyes in his 5th round, and take his total tally to 279. To top things off, Dhiraj went on to hit two more consecutive bullsseyes in the sixth and finally get up to 335 points at the end of 6 rounds.

Although with a dip in his ranking, it was Pravin Jadhav who impressed a lot of people by hitting two bulls-eye in his 4 rounds of shots, and ending with a total points tally of 217. However, Jadhav just could not maintain a similar sort of composure and managed just one more bullseye in the following rounds, and ended his first-half with a total of 328 in 37th spot.

Dhiraj makes strong comeback
The second half for the Indian contingent was all about the fanatical comeback of Dhiraj Bommadevara. Having dropped to the 40s, Dhiraj started off the second half with a clear focus on glory. After getting 335 points in the first half, Dhiraj had already clinched a total of 173 points 3 rounds into the second half, which included 4 bullsseyes.

The eagle-eyed Dhiraj went on to nail 5 more bullseyes in the final 3 rounds and finished with 346 points in 4th spot. On the other hand, Tarundeep Rai faced a slight dip in the momentum he started out with. After having bagged a total of 6 bullseyes in the first-half, Tarundeep could manage only two bullsseyes in his second-half of shots. Coincidentally, Tarundeep went on to finish in 14th with 337 points, which was the exact score at the end of his first-half throws.

With this achievement of the men’s team coming only hours after the qualification of the women’s archery team, India finsihes 3rd on the teams leaderboard with a total score of 2013. On the other hand, the mixed team is now set up for India between Ankita Bhakat and Dhiraj Bommadevara.