Tokyo: India's campaign at the Tokyo Olympics kickstarted on Friday with Archer Deepika Kumari finishing ninth at a score of 663 in the main event of Women's Individual Ranking round here at the Yumenoshima Ranking Field.
Deepika performance dipped towards the end after making a strong comeback in the first half.
The final set score: X-10-9-9-9-7.
Top of the charts were occupied by South Koreans -- An San, Jang Minhee and Kang Chaeyoung.
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India🇮🇳 begins its #Tokyo2020 journey with @ImDeepikaK finishing 9th with a score of 663 in the Women’s recurve archery ranking round.
— SAIMedia (@Media_SAI) July 23, 2021 " class="align-text-top noRightClick twitterSection" data="
South Korea’s 🇰🇷 An San created a new #Olympic record with a score of 680.
Send in your wishes for #TeamIndia with #Cheer4India pic.twitter.com/0QKAImz6YI
">India🇮🇳 begins its #Tokyo2020 journey with @ImDeepikaK finishing 9th with a score of 663 in the Women’s recurve archery ranking round.
— SAIMedia (@Media_SAI) July 23, 2021
South Korea’s 🇰🇷 An San created a new #Olympic record with a score of 680.
Send in your wishes for #TeamIndia with #Cheer4India pic.twitter.com/0QKAImz6YIIndia🇮🇳 begins its #Tokyo2020 journey with @ImDeepikaK finishing 9th with a score of 663 in the Women’s recurve archery ranking round.
— SAIMedia (@Media_SAI) July 23, 2021
South Korea’s 🇰🇷 An San created a new #Olympic record with a score of 680.
Send in your wishes for #TeamIndia with #Cheer4India pic.twitter.com/0QKAImz6YI
Read: Tokyo Olympics: Archer Deepika Kumari at fourth with 334 points after first half
A score of 680 saw 20-year-old An San creating an Olympic record during the game. San improved the previous Olympic record of 673 points by 7 more.
The world No.1 will now compete against BT Karma of Bhutan, who finished 56th in the ranking round, in the first round of Women's Individual Recurve Archery event.
Chances are that Deepika might have to face San in the quarterfinals. In 2019, she had lost to her in straight sets at an Olympic Test event.
"I feel my performance was good as well as bad...it was in between I would say," Deepika said.
India's medal hopeful had finished the first half with a strong performance at 334 points, occupying fourth position.
The completion of 36 Arrows of 72 saw Deepika making a brilliant comeback and improving her game that saw her climbing up to number fourth position after a sluggish start.
But she was let down in the last six sets. "I don't know why it was like that; I was trying to control my shots so that I could play better. I want to show my best performance here and I will show that in my next rounds," she added.
The archery competition starts with a ranking round, where all 128 archers (64 men and as many women) are asked to shoot 72 arrows at a target 70 meters away in 12 ends (groupings). Each archer has two minutes to shoot six arrows at each end. 720 is the perfect score.
Read: Tokyo Olympics A Curtain Raiser: Deepika Kumari, Atanu Das to compete on Day 1
In the Men's Individual Ranking -- Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai and Praveen Jadhav -- will be seen in action today.
On Day 1 of the 15-day sporting spectacle, two sports -- Archery and Rowing -- are scheduled for the competition in the morning before the opening ceremony.
