The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Archer Karma faced India’s Deepika Kumari in the women’s individual recurve archery in Japan on 28 July at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Karma lost all the three sets to Deepika Kumari. However, she maintained a competitive game with India’s best archer. The three sets scores were 26-23, 26-23 and 27-24 and she managed to hit a perfect 10 pointer in the third set, which is said to be impressive for the game.
Karma scored 627 MQS, which qualified her to become the very first full-fledged participant from Bhutan.
She was ranked 56th out of 64 archers with 616 points and Deepika, Karmas competitor with ninth rank on 23 July.
Karma has won the hearts of the Bhutanese by becoming the first athlete to qualify for the Olympics.
“To qualify for the Olympics was my biggest dream. To achieve the Tokyo Olympics was like achieving a medal for our country. I’m very satisfied. I didn’t think I’m scared or I want to beat her or she could beat me. I didn’t think of that. I just kept in mind that I wanted to give my best,” said Karma.
As for swimmer Sangay Tenzin, he completed the 100m freestyle swimming in 57.57 seconds on 27 July, but he could not make it to the next round. He stood fifth out of seven members competing in his group, which is one group out of the 70 swimmers divided into nine groups.
On July 24, judoka Ngawang Namgyel was defeated by Mihrac Akkus from Turkey, a silver medalist at the 2020 Judo Grand Prix Tel, Israel. Ngawang lost in 2 minutes and 56 seconds. Bhutan Judo Association (BJA) stated that Ngawang Namgyel lost by an arm bar. It was also said that his grip fighting was good, and that he has put up a good positive judo match, and even attempted a shoulder throw. It was said that Ngawang had the disadvantage of facing a lefty and that training against a lefty has not been done.
Shooter Lenchu Kunzang was said to be way ahead than Sri Lanka and Nepalese shooters, however, she was eliminated on 24 July in the 10m Air Rifle Women’s Qualifications round with 618.1 points out of 654 which was better than her MQS of 615.4 points in Qatar 2019. Lenchu’s score was just 10.4 less than Anastasiia Galashina from Russia who took home the silver medal.
Meanwhile, the officials and participants from shooting, judo, swimming, and archery are reported be to COVID-19 free, and be will leaving Tokyo on 30 July. They are expected to reach the country on 16 August.
