Das, Kumari and Devi shine; Laxmirani disappoints in pre-Olympic archery event not shown on TV

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In a pre-Olympic event, not shown on TV, Indian archers were a mixed bag. On Day 0 - Opening Ceremony day - the archery ranking events for both men's and women's took place. Since it is a pre-Opening Ceremony event - only other event is football, that began on 4th August - it wasn't shown live on television, whether it was Star Sports in India or the BBC in the United Kingdom. All pre-Opening Ceremony events aren't shown on television and no one knows the reason for this.

@IMSahilBhalla There won't be coverage of the games prior to the opening ceremony. Tune in to our network tomorrow @ 4 PM for LIVE action.

— Star Sports (@StarSportsIndia) August 5, 2016

At the Sambódromo, the men's event took place first. India had only one archer in Atanu Das and hence wasn't ranked in the team event (a country needs three archers). Atanu Das was clearly the star, among both men's and women's.

In the ranking events, every archer shoots 72 arrows. They are shot in groups of six and the archer with the most number of points at the end finished first. The importance of these ranking rounds is that the higher you finish the easier your draw is for subsequent rounds.

Atanu Das, hailing from West Bengal, was the sole representative among the men. He surprised all with a total score of 683, which put him in 5th position. With this high ranking, his draw has become relative easy. He will now face Nepalese archer, Jitbahadur Muktan, who finished 60th in the ranking event.

In the women's event, Deepika Kumari, during the 5th round, was on top of the rankings. A couple of not so good rounds later, she could only finish 20th. Bombayla was fairly consistant in the middle of the pack and finished in 24th place. Laxmirani, with a world ranking of 15, was aiming to script a fairytale. Unfortunately, all she could manage was 43rd position out of 64 athletes participating in the event. This means that for Kumari and Bombayla, they have gotten a fairly decent draw. On the other hand, Lamirani has a mountain to climb after a poor performance.

In the team event, the country's finishing in the top four get a bye to the quaterfinals. The rest of the eight teams fight it out. India's combined score of all three archers of 1892 meant that they finished in seventh place. They will now face 10th place finishers Columbia.

Here's who all these four archers will be taking on in the next round.

Archery: Atanu Das to take on Jitbahadur Muktan of Nepal (who finished 60th here in ranking round) next in R64 on 8th Aug #Rio2016

— India@Sports (@India_AllSports) August 5, 2016

Archery: Women Ind. (R64):
Deepika Vs Kristine Esebua (45th)
L. Bombayla Devi Vs Baldauff (41st)
Laxmirani Majhi Vs Longova (22nd)

— India@Sports (@India_AllSports) August 5, 2016

World record and an Olympic record

#RioRecords: Kim Woojin breaks an #Archery world record with the first recurve 700 in history at the #Sambódromo pic.twitter.com/YaGqh5Wrr2

— Rio 2016 (@Rio2016_en) August 5, 2016

The Summer Olympics haven't even begun officially - that happens with the Opening Ceremony - and there has already been an Olympic and World record set at the Rio Games.

South Korean archer, Kim Woojin, scored the first recurve score of 700 at the 70-meter distance in history. In doing so, Woojin set an Olympic and world record. His score of 700 was 20 less than the maximum possible of 720. The previous record of 699, set by fellow countryman Im Dong Hyun during the 2012 London Games was beat by a single point. Kim is the world's top-ranked player. With 12 arrows left, he needed a score of 118 out of 120, meaning he'd have to be nearly perfect, and he was!

"I practiced more than everyone else and I gave my best for the entire round," Kim told reporters. "Tomorrow there is a more important match. In terms of celebrating today - I want to focus on tomorrow's match."