India's golfer Gaganjeet Bhullar romped home to a three-shot victory at the Macao Open to bag his eighth Asian Tour title in Macau on Sunday.
Top archers Jayanta Talulkar and Mangal Singh Champia were eliminated in the quarterfinals of the individual events in Doha.
Ace Indian archer Deepika Kumari confessed on Monday that she needs to stop buckling under the pressure of performing at the Olympic Games and approach the biggest sporting stage from a different perspective to achieve desired results in future.
India has just 28 Olympic medals to its credit since making a debut back in 1900.
In a memorable day for Indians, seven of them made the semi-finals in different categories of the first Asian Grand Prix archery in Bangkok on Friday.
Indian women's recurve team showed nerves of steel to win the gold, while the men's trio couldn't match up to their female counterparts and had to settle for a bronze in the archery competition of the Commonwealth Games at the Yamuna Sports Complex in New Delhi on Friday.
Indian women recurve team on Sunday missed the opportunity to win its first-ever gold medal and had to settle for a bronze at the World Cup Archery Stage III at Ogden (USA).
The men's team lost to Korea in the semi-finals and then went down to Italy in the bronze medal match at the World championships.
The Indians failed to shoot even a single 10 in the first set as the top seed Korean duo of An San and Kim Je Deok took the first set 35-32 in a low-scoring affair.
After a year's delay due to COVID-19, the 19th Asian Games officially opens in Hangzhou on Saturday with hosts China eager to lift a country mired in economic gloom.
The Indian archers may find the going tough against the strong Koreans who are expected to dominate the event at the Asian Games.
India's sports stars including badminton P V Sindhu was conferred the Padma Bhushan -- the country's third-highest civilian award, while women's football icon Bembem Devi, archer Tarundeep Rai and women's hockey captain Rani Rampal were conferred with the Padma Shri.
Led by Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra, India will seek to showcase its ascendency as a sporting power at the Asian Games, which opens formally on Saturday after an unprecedented one-year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Archery was one discipline which generated a lot of hype in the run-up to the Olympics and the let-down was one of the big blows to India's hit-and-miss overall campaign of one silver and one bronze medal show in Rio 2016.
The men's team won the compound gold and a silver and bronze medal in the recurve event at the 14th Asian Archery Championships.
On a highly successful day for India, the trio of Jayanta Talukdar, Tarundeep Rai and Rahul Banerjee clinched gold before Deepika Kumari settled for a silver medal at the Archery World Cup Stage IV in Shanghai on Saturday.
India cricket captain Virat Kohli and weightlifter Mirabai Chanu were on Monday recommended for Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna by the awards selection committee.
It was a none-too-impressive beginning to the Olympic calendar year for Indian archers as they finished with a solitary silver medal in the World Cup Stage I, which concluded in Shanghai on Sunday.
Locked 5-5 after the regulation five-setter, the 27-year-old Indian held her nerves in the shoot-off to deliver a perfect 10, hitting the bull's eye, to topple the Russian, a team silver medallist at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Indian archers entered the final round in individual recurve and compound as well as team events, at the Commonwealth Archery Championships.
While a billion hearts would pray for all the participants to do well, all eyes would be set on the duo of Deepika Kumari/Atanu Das, the four shooters and Mirabai Chanu to open India's medals count.
One day, Jadhav's sports teacher at his Zilla Parishad School in Sarade, Vikas Bhujbal, found some promise in him and asked him to compete in athletics to earn a better living.
Tokyo should remain the benchmark and source of inspiration till at least Paris 2024. In the shorter run, India's preparations for the Asian and Commonwealth Games next year must begin based on lessons learnt now, asserts Raj Kishore Mishra, former joint secretary at the sports ministry.
One of India's strongest Olympic medal hopes, ace shooter Manu Bhaker feels preparations 'cannot get better' than the ongoing training-cum-competition tour of Croatia as she works on her consistency ahead of the Tokyo Games.
Clueless about their future in the wake of Archery Association of India's (AAI) derecognition, the young marksmen hope to make an appeal through their players' association with the season scheduled to commence in a couple of months time.
Archers Tarundeep Rai of Services and Rahul Banerjee of Railways have been named in the Indian men's recurve team for the first three World Cups.
After failing to deliver when it mattered most, India's ace archer Deepika Kumari blamed her mediocre showing in the 4-5 defeat to Russia in the quarter-finals of the women's recurve competition at the Rio Olympics on windy conditions.
India had a disappointing start to the Archery World Cup Stage IV with the country's best medal hope Deepika Kumari slipping to 19th as the women's recurve team finished sixth and men's squad earning the fifth place in the qualification rounds at Wroclaw, Poland, on Tuesday.
South Korea set the first world records of the London Olympics, both in the men's archery competition, with legally blind Im Dong-hyun breaking the 72-arrow mark with 699 points.
At a time when his former teammate Sawaiyan Majhi has been appointed Indian recurve coach, the 33-year-old would look to bring his playing career back on track with a second medal from the Asian Games in Indonesia.
Mangal Singh Champia, Jayanta Talukdar and Rahul Banerjee combined to clinch their second successive gold in the men's recurve team event as India signed off with three medals in the Archery World Cup Stage I at Santo Domnigo in the Dominican Republic. The trio had earned India its first-ever gold at the Meteksan World Cup in Antalya, Turkey, last year.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually interacted with 10 athletes, including 2016 Rio edition gold winners Devendra Jhajharia and Mariyappan Thangavelu, and urged them to compete without pressure at the upcoming Tokyo Paralympics.
India will not take part in baseball, bowling, fencing, karate, modern pentathlon, rugby, softball, soft tennis and triathlon because of the athletes' poor standards.
A summary of sports events and persons who made news on Saturday
Check out the complete schedule of Indian athletes at the Tokyo Olympics
Ranked fourth in the qualification round, Deepika found the going tough against the second seed, who produced fine shooting, including a flawless third set to clinch the match 6-0 in her favour.
Ankita Raina and top seeds men's doubles pair of Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan assured India of at least a couple of bronze medals in the tennis competition by progressing to the semifinals at the Asian Games, in Palembang, on Wednesday.
Archer Atanu Das and boxer Vikas Krishan entered the pre-quarterfinals, while the men's hockey team stood up to the challenge posed by Argentina to virtually sew up a last-eight spot on a reasonably successful day for Indian athletes in the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
'When I checked with the Chinese Embassy about the status of my visa application, I was told by embassy officials that since I belong to Arunachal Pradesh, an approval from Beijing is required' 'It has been 54 years since the Chinese aggression of 1962 and 70 years of India's Independence. The issue of Arunachal Pradesh remains unsettled because of the territorial dispute between India and China which has put the future of the Indigenous people of Arunachal in uncertainty'
Former Olympian and World Cup gold medallist Jayanta Talukdar was being treated in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for low oxygen count a week after he was diagnosed with COVID-19.
