Bengaluru, June 26 (IANS) The Archery Association of India (AAI) on Sunday kept faith on Atanu Das and selected him to represent the nation in the men's recurve event at the Rio Olympics after conducting trials here.
It will be the 24-year-old's first Olympics and he will be the only one representing the country in the event at the Games which start on August 5.
The Kolkata boy edged out veterans Jayanta Talukdar and Mangal Singh Champia to bag a ticket to Rio.
He made three semi-final appearances at the World Cup in Antalya and with 653 points had qualified behind Talukdar (659) and Champia (649).
But in the knock-outs he skipped past the challenge of both Champia and Talukdar.
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Champia, who had finished among the top eight at the World Championships in Copenhagen had grabbed a berth for the games in August and would consider himself unlucky to miss out on it himself but then again the Jamshedpur talent has run out of fizz lately.
Incidentally the Indian men's team has also failed to make the cut for Rio.
However, the women's recurve team of Deepika Kumari, L. Bombayla Devi and Laxmirani Manjhi have already qualified for the individual as well as team event in Rio.
The four archers now will camp here till they leave for Rio.
Atanu had recently pocketed a silver with Deepika as his partner in the mixed category at the Archery World Cup in Antalya.
He also stood fourth in the individual recurve event at the same event.
Atanu had also clinched two silver medals (Wroclaw and Medellin, 2014) and two mixed pair bronze medals (Medellin 2013 and 2014) in the World Cups.
--IANS
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