India's Olympic campaign got off to a good start with archer Atanu Das finishing an impressive fifth with a score of 683 in the men's individual ranking round at Sambadrome on Friday. South Korea's Kim Woo-jin shattered the existing Olympic and world record with a score of 700. Previously in the men's event, Im Dong-hyun held the Olympic record for posting a score of 699 at the London Olympics in 2012. The highest-possible score for the ranking round, in which each archer shoots 72 arrows in batches of six, is 720.
Atanu will next compete with Nepal's Jitbahadur Muktan on August 9.
The ranking round helps determine the head-to-head, elimination contests and isn't an elimination round in itself. The archers will be pitted against each other based on their rankings in the Round of 32 matches. The archer ranked No. 1, for instance, will shoot against the No. 64-ranked archer, No. 2 vs. No. 63 and so forth. The individual elimination rounds will be held from August 8-12.
A commendable round saw Atanu breaking into the top 10 with a score of 59 in the ninth set to take his total to 508. Though he shot a 58 in the following round, with two bulls-eyes, two 10s and two 9s, he dropped a place to 11th spot, with a tally of 566.
Putting up a strong performance in the penultimate round, Atanu moved to the seventh position with 625 points.
Earlier, getting off to a good start, the 24-year-old Indian archer found himself in third position with a total score of 58 after the first series of shots. Mongolia's Gantugs Jansen led the standings early on before Woojin moved into the lead with a perfect fifth round score of 60 to race to a 292 total.
Atanu Das was placed in the 15th spot with 337 points, while Kim was at 348 points after 36 arrows.