Sports Shorts: Neeraj finishes 6th in Eugene leg of Diamond League

A summary of sports events and persons who made news on Saturday

Top Indian javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra finished sixth in the Diamond League Series third leg with a below-par effort of 80.81m here.

The 20-year-old Indian, the reigning Asian and Commonwealth champion, had shattered his own national record with a throw of 87.43m while finishing fourth in the first leg in Doha last month.

But at the Prefontaine Classic, he was not at his best as he had three foul throws.

Neeraj began with a 76.95m effort and then came up with a 80.81m in the second which turned out to be his best of the day. He had a 80.26m in his third attempt before fouling the final three throws.

The top three spots in the eight-man field were expectedly taken by the Germans with the reigning

Olympic champion Thomas Rohler unleashing the biggest throw ever witnessed at the venue with a best effort of 89.88m under cool and breezy conditions.

Reigning world champion Johannes Vetter took the silver with a best throw of 89.34m while Andreas Hofmann took the third spot with a best effort of 86.45m.

Indians falter in women's recurve bronze play-off

Indian women's recurve team paid the price of inconsistency as it lost the bronze medal match to Chinese Taipei on the concluding day of the second stage Archery World Cup here today.

Eyeing a third medal from the meet, the Indian trio of Deepika Kumari, Ankita Bhakat and Promila Daimary started poorly before winning the third set but that was not enough as Taipei clinched the contest 6-2 in the fourth set.

The Indian team struggled to find the perfect 10s while Taipei brilliantly raised their level in set 4 to produce five 10s out of a possible six to win the match.

India thus ended their campaign with a silver and a bronze, courtesy a fine show in the compound section on Friday.

Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Muskan Kirar and Divya Dhayal had won a silver in the women's compound team category. They were flawless in the entire event but ultimately lost to Chinese Taipei 228-231 in the final match.

Jyothi had also bagged a second medal when she partnered with Abhishek Verma to win a bronze medal in the compound mixed pair category.

Ravi Kumar narrowly misses out final round spot

Indian shooter Ravi Kumar missed out on making it to his third ISSF Word Cup final of the year by 0.6 points as he finished 13th in the men's 10m air rifle event in Munich on Saturday.

Ravi, who won a bronze at the World Cup first stage in Guadalajara, Mexico and came fourth at the second stage in Changwon, Korea, shot a score of 628.6 in the 60-shots qualification round on day three of competitions, missing out on the eight-man finals by 0.6 points.

Illia Charheika of Belarus won the gold medal while Russia's Vladimir Maslennikov bagged silver and Chinese Taipei's Shao-Chuan Lu settled for bronze in the World Cup fourth stage 10m air rifle event here.

Arjun Babuta and Deepak Kumar, the two other Indians in the 10m air rifle qualification, shot 627.7 and 627.4 to finish 20th and 25th respectively.

Tomorrow has three finals scheduled with the women's 50m rifle 3 positions being the first on the card followed by the women's 10m air pistol and the men's 25m rapid fire pistol.