Five Indian archers in medal round of Asian GP

Five Indians made it to the medal round in the individual section of the second Asian Grand Prix archery tournament in Tehran.

Olympian Tarundeep Rai (men's recurve), L Haridas Singh (men's compound) and Sweety Kumari (women's compound) moved into the final on Friday, while Muni Ram Tirkey (men's recurve) and Sushma (women's recurve) reached the bronze medal play-off.

Tarundeep, seeded second, will take on fourth seed Milad Vaziri Teymoorlooei of Iran for the gold medal. The Indian army archer, who missed the individual bronze medal by a whisker in the 2005 Madrid World Championship, showed enough touch and class in this meet.

He had scores of 109, 106 and 106 in the three rounds he played so far and will be looking to avenge compatriot Muni Ram Tirkey's defeat in the semi-finals at the hands of Milad.

The Iranian had defeated top seed Muni Ram Tirkey in the semi-finals 109-106.

The semi-final loss pushed Tirkey against sixth seed Nadar M of Iran in the bronze medal play-off. The other two, Kapil and K Shiv Shankar, lost in the quarters.

Fifth seeded Indian Haridas Singh will come up against third seed Hungarian Robert Bojti in the men's compound division final.

Singh scored 116 in the first round, 112 in the second and in the semi-finals he downed top seed Hamzeh Nekooi of Iran 109-107.

The other Indians, L Chinglensana Luwang, Amrinder Singh, and Arun Sharma, were eliminated early.

Sweety was the best among four Indian women compound archers. She ensured a place in the final against second seed Seyedeh Vida Halimian Avval of Iran.

The other three disappointed with a miserable display, Manjudha Soy losing to Leila Sakhaeifar of Iran in the quarter-finals 102-108, while Vrushali Gorle lost to Sweety at the same stage 99-104.

Sakro Besra lost to the second seed, also in the quarter-finals 100-111.

Sushma reached the women's recurve semi-finals where she lost to ninth ranked Farideh Mirzaei of Iran 91-95.

Sushma will play 10th seed Zahara Nemati of Iran for the bronze medal.

Reena Kumari, Olympian V Pranitha and Punya Prabha all lost in the second round.