INCHEON (TIP): India‘s women recurve team kept itself in medal contention by moving to the semifinals of the Asian Games even as the men’s recurve team suffered a close 3-5 defeat against Hong Kong to crash out in the elimination round of the archery competition on Friday. The trio of Deepika Kumari, L Bombayla Devi and Laxmirani Majhi blanked Uzbekistan 6-0 before recording a close 5-4 win over Taipei in the quarterfinals. Taking on the Uzbek team, consisting of Munira Nurmanova, Irina Savinova and Khilola Yunusova, the Indian women dominated the contest with the scores of 50, 56 and 52 in three sets.

The Uzbek women could only manage 34, 47 and 31. The contest against Tapei’s Shu Chi Yuan, Chia En Lin and Nien Hsiu Yang was decided via a shoot-off as the two teams were locked 2-2 after splitting four sets. In the shoot-off, India totalled 26 with scores of 9, 9 and 8 while Taipei could only manage 24 with scores of 9,8 and 7. In the semifinals, the Indian women are now up against formidable hosts Korea. However, India men’s team comprising Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai and Jayanta Talukdar lost the deciding fourth set by a narrow margin of one point (52-53) to crash out. After losing the first set 53-54 to the combo of Chun Man Chui, Kar Wai Calvin Lee and Hing Kin Ma they won the second 54-42. The third ended in a tie of (54-54). In the fourth, the 10 scored by Hon Kong archers on the first arrow proved decisive as they beat India by one point in the end.