Diya to feature in Tokyo
The promising archer Diya Siddique made it through to the Olympics despite having missed out at the direct quota place after going down in an even fight with third-ranked Ana Umer of Slovenia in the final qualification tournament for Tokyo 2020 in Paris yesterday.
Later in the day, Diya was selected to participate as a wild card entry, as announced by the Olympic Games Tripartite Commission.
Top five finishers from women's individual recurve event were supposed to get the direct tickets for Tokyo Olympics while four wild or invitation cards were to be given to players from developing countries. Thus, Bangladesh were one of the stronger candidates to gain the invitation ticket for women participants, having already had earned a direct quota through Ruman Sana.
"We have a good possibility to get a wild card in women's individual event," hoped Bangladesh Archery Federation general secretary Kazi Razib Uddin Ahmed Chapa earlier in the day prior to announcement, hinting at Diya.
Diya, who along with Sana bagged a silver medal in World Cup (Stage-2) last month in Switzerland, gave her superior opponent and third-ranked Umer a run for her money in the third round yesterday before going down in tiebreaker despite scoring equal eight points.
The BKSP student lost the first two sets 25-26, 25-27 to Umer before bouncing back to level the set points by winning third and fourth sets 27-26, 28-26. The match was thus forced to roll into the deciding fifth set which saw Umer and Diya tied with 23-23, equalling 5-5 on set points.
To break the tie, both of them stepped up to shoot a single arrow each, but only to end up being level on 8-8. Umer eventually was declared the winner because her arrow, compared to Diya's, was closer to the centre of the target.
Diya had earlier beaten Argentina's Florencia Leithold in 6-0 set points in the second round while her teammates Beauty Roy and Mahanaz Akhter Moneera got defeated in their respective matches.
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