The Indian archery challenge at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics came to a halt after Atanu Das made a pre-quarterfinal exit on Saturday. He was up against Japan’s Takaharu Furukawa and lost 4-6 in a five-set thriller. The game was neck and neck till the fourth set of the encounter and was decided in the fifth and final set.
Talking about the match, Atanu Das said: “In the Olympics, every match is different, the situation, mindset, everything is different. I don’t want to compare (with the match against Oh). I tried but it’s okay I failed.”
This was India’s best performance in archery in terms of progressing and Atanu seemed optimistic.
“Maybe, I took too much tension, it’s a game we have to deal with. Next time, I will try harder,” he said.
“We need proper planning and strategy to excel at these Games. We have learnt a lot and it’s about keeping your nerves stable. Looking forward to the World Championship and World Finals now,” he added.
As the Indian challenge came to an end, a dream of an archery Olympic medal still remained elusive.
This defeat comes a day after World No 1 Deepika Kumari performed poorly in the last-eight stage against An San of Korea, who went on to win a gold medal.
Atanu was in solid form, knocking out London Olympics gold medallist Oh Jin Hyek in the last 32 but failed to beat Furukawa, who is a silver medal winner at the 2012 London edition.
Returning to action a day after his stunning shoot-off win over the Korean heavyweight, Atanu had two loose arrows in the 8-ring in the first set that proved costly in the end, and Furukawa prevailed by just one point in the decider to seal a thrilling win.
In his maiden Olympics at Rio 2016, Atanu had lost by an identical 4-6 margin to former Korean world champion Lee Seungyun, a team gold medallist at the Games.
The other Indian male archers – Pravin Jadhav and Tarundeep Rai – had already exited the competition. Before this India made quarterfinal exits in both the men’s team and mixed pair events, going down to Korea in their respective matches.
