Gopi, Jitender win, but rest flounder

Shuttler Pullela Gopichand cruised to a hard-earned second round win in men's singles and boxer Jitender Kumar won his first round bout in the first round in the 75 kg class, but the other Indians found themselves out of depth at the Olympic Games on Monday.

National champion Gopi, ranked tenth in the world and given a first round bye, carved out a 15-3 10-15 15-7 win over his Ukraine rival Vladislav Druzchenko in less than an hour to earn a third round clash against second seed Hendrawan of Indonesia.

Later in the day, Kumar totally outclassed Canadian Donald Grant in the 75 kg category. Right from round one the tall Indian pummelled the hapless Canadian and was leading 9-3 when the referee stopped the fight in the third round. Grant's face was bloody when the fight was stopped.

Gopi's creditable first outing, however, was the lone silverlining on the otherwise gloomy scenario for India as teenaged rifle shooter Abhinav Bindra, freestyle woman swimmer Nisha Millet, weightlifting hope Sanamacha Chanu and paddlers Chetan Baboor and Poulomi Ghatak were found severely wanting.

Bindra, the 17-year-old and youngest shooter at the Olympics, narrowly failed to qualify for the 10 metre men's air rifle final by one point and finished joint 11th with two others after tallying 590 out of 600 points.

The Bangalore-based Nisha was nowhere near her best effort of 2:06.62 and clocked 2:08.89 in the women's 200m freestyle event which, despite enabling her to win her preliminary heats, failed to qualify for the next round because of her very poor time. Her time got her pathetic 37th position from 39 starters.

Weightlifter Sanamacha Chanu tied with two other lifters, Franca Gbodo of Nigeria and Win Swe Swe of Myanmar, in fourth place in the total lift (195 kg) in the 53 class women's competition.

The Indian woman, from Manipur, had to be content with the sixth spot due to a higher bodyweight.

In table tennis India's tale of woes ended with the elimination of national number one Chetan Baboor and national women's champion Poulomi Ghatak at the preliminary stage itself.

Baboor went down to New Zealand's Peter Jackson after a good fight 23-25 18-21 21-23 in his final group C league match while Poulomi lost to Veronika Pavlovich of Bulgaria 14-21 17-21 16-21 in a group L women's singles league match.

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