Paris Olympics | So near yet so far: Lakshya and skeet shooters fall short of historic medals

Paris/Chateauroux: It was a day of near misses as Lakshya Sen’s steely resolve finally wilted in the high-pressure bronze playoff, an unexpected skeet medal in shooting slipped away after a promising start, while a podium hope in wrestling was left in tears, adding to India’s mounting heartbreaks in the Olympic Games.

Sen, hoping to become India’s first male shuttler to win an Olympic medal, was expected to come out trumps against Malyasia’s world no.7 Lee Zii Jia. But it was not meant to be as he squandered a game’s advantage to lose 21-13 16-21 11-21 in a 71-minute clash.

Around the time the 22-year-old crumbled under pressure in Paris, some 300km away in Chateauroux’s shooting range, Maheshwari Chauhan and Anant Jeet Singh Naruka lost by a solitary point to China in the skeet mixed team event, settling for the fourth spot.

Maheshwari and Naruka shot 43 to finish fourth behind China’s Yiting Jiang and Jianlin Lyu (44) in a thrilling match for the bronze medal.

There was more agony in store for India when grappler Nisha Dahiya was left sobbing in acute pain after she lost her quarter-final bout to North Korea’s Pak Sol Gum 8-10 in the women’s 68 kg freestyle category.

Leading 8-1 at one stage with just over 90 seconds left, Nisha sustained a serious injury on her right hand, which left her in agonising pain as she wept inconsolably. Following a medical break, she didn’t have any strength left in her right hand and it became a cakewalk for the North Korean, who showed her ruthless streak to get a leg-hold and nine straight points.

With 10 seconds left, the scoreline was 8-8 but the writing was on the wall as the Haryana woman surrendered in the dying moments.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though with the women’s table tennis team of Manika Batra, Sreeja Akula and Archana Kamath beating higher-ranked Romania to enter the quarter-finals. Leading 2-0, India saw Romania fight back to draw level at 2-2 but in the decider, Manika delivered for her side.

India will be up against either the USA or Germany in the quarter-finals. Despite the underwhelming show on Monday, India will have plenty to look forward to on Tuesday.

Having displayed nerves of steel to be within touching distance of a second successive Olympic medal, the Indian hockey team will fancy its chances against familiar foe and reigning world champion Germany in the semi-final, hoping to better the bronze that it claimed in the Tokyo edition.

India won the last of their eight Olympic gold medals way back in the 1980 Moscow Games. A semi-final win will ensure at least a silver for India, which they last won in the 1960 Rome edition.

A man of many firsts in Indian athletics, Neeraj Chopra would be eyeing another piece of history with his javelin when he takes aim at his second Olympics amid expectations of a golden finish yet again. His fabled consistency would be tested after a season that has seen him battle a nagging adductor niggle. He would begin his quest on Tuesday with the qualifications round from where the Haryana lad is expected to make the finals on August 8.

A top podium finish will make Chopra only the fifth man in Olympics history to defend his title and the first Indian to win two gold medals in an individual event in the multi-sporting spectacle.

Eric Lemming (Sweden; 1908 and 1912), Jonni Myyra (Finland; 1920 and 1924), Chopra’s idol Jan Zelezny (Czech Republic; 1992, 1996 and 2000) and Andreas Thorkildsen (Norway; 2004 and 2008) are the only ones to have defended the men’s javelin gold medals in the Olympics.