The Indian women belied medal expectations and bowed out of the archery team event, going down narrowly to France in the quarter-final at the Olympic Games in Athens on Friday.
The Indian troika of Dola Banerjee, Reena Kumari and Sumangala Sharma suffered a solitary point (227-228) loss to their French counterparts in the 27-arrow tie at the historic Panathinaiko stadium.
The Indians, who edged past Great Britain 230-228 in a closely contested pre-quarter-final earlier in the day, were done in by a poor display in the second series and the beginning of the third and last series against the French.
The Indian archers began well, establishing a two-point lead at the end of the opening series of nine arrows, to take a two-point lead, but then flip-flopped in the second series to trail the French team comprising Alexandra Fouace, Berangere Schuh and Aurore Trayan by four points.
The Indians, who had finished fifth in the ranking round, returned scores of 24, 28, 26 in the first series, but their points dropped to 24, 22 and 26 in the second.
In contrast, the French women, who got the 13th position in the ranking meet last Thursday, scored 23, 28, 25 and 25, 25, 28 in the first two series respectively.
Leading 154-150 at the beginning of the final series, the French shot 26 with their first effort in the third series against the 22 by the Indians and leapt to an eight-point lead.
The fate of the match was virtually sealed then, and though the Indians shot an impressive 29 in their second effort it was not enough to reverse the course of the contest.
The Indian eves got seven 10-pointers including two bull's eye hits. In comparison, the French scored four 10-pointers and two bull's eye hits.
Tomorrow, the Indian men's team, comprising Satyadev Prasad, Majhi Sawaiyan and Tarundeep Rai, will be up against fancied Australia in the men's team competition, that will bring down the curtain on the archery competition.
The Indian men had finished ninth in the ranking meet, two rungs below the Aussies.
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