Trinidad and Tobago archer Daryl Ramnarace missed out on qualifying for the Olympic Games, but T&T's Compound Bow team finished third in a recent world ranking tournament.
At the World Ranking and Continental Qualification tournaments hosted in Medellin, Colombia last month, Recurve Bow target man Ramnarace battled unsuccessfully for one of three Olympic berths at London 2012.
The US-based archer placed 23rd in the ranking round with an overall score of 1,148 points and then faced Colombian Diego Torres in the elimination round. He lost the contest on the set system despite close scores in the match.
Torres was eventually eliminated by Cuban Juan Carlos Stevens, one of three archers qualifying for the Olympics. The other qualifiers hailed from Brazil and Colombia.
T&T's Compound Bow team of George Vire, Hasmath Ali and Rakesh Sookoo bagged bronze in the world ranking event, two spots below their gold medal performance last year in Costa Rica.
In individual competition, though, they were unable to get past the quarter-finals.
Sookoo was seeded 12th in the ranking round, while Vire and Ali were seeded 15th and 16th, respectively. Sookoo's position earned him a first round bye in the elimination round, but both Ali and Vire won their first round encounters to reach the quarter-finals.
There, Sookoo lost to eventual champion Tomas Restrepo. Sookoo led by two points after nine arrows, but lost by the same margin after a bad shot.
Vire shot 144 out of a possible 150 points, but still lost to Mexican Gerald Alvarez by two points as well. Mexico's top-ranked archer Cuauhtemoc Rodriguez also accounted for Ali, winning 143-136.
The T&T compound team, along with teammate Nikhil Kanhai, left for El Salvador on Sunday to take part in the Pan American Championships, where they will face off against the top archers and teams in the region.
Source: www.trinidadexpress.com