Diya Siddique’s Olympic journey comes to an end after tie-breaker heartbreak

After Ruman Sana, the expectation was high from promising women's archer Diya Siddique in Tokyo Olympics, but despite an impressive performance, Diya's dream to qualify in the second round of recurve women's individual event vanished into blue after losing to Karyna Dziominskaya of Belarus in tie-breaker of first elimination round held today in Japan.

The 17-year-old archer ranked 155th in World Ranking, gave her opponent, who is ranked-31, a run for her money till the end as Diya tied the five-set match to 5-5 set points before losing 10-9 in a one-arrow tiebreaker.

The promising archer made an auspicious start in the first set by winning 23-22 set points, but she could not keep the tempo as she lost the second set closely 25-26 points.

Later, the third set ended in a 25-25 draw and her Belarusian again went ahead by winning the fourth set by 27-25 points.

The girl from Nilphamari staged a brilliant fightback as she neutralized the set 5-5 after winning the fifth set by 27-25 points which eventually led the match into a tiebreaker.

Later in the shoot-off, Diya lost by 6-5 sets because her solid score of nine under pressure was not enough in the match of her opponent, who scored 10.   

After the end of the Olympics mission, Ruman Sana and Diya Siddique finished 17th and 33rd positions in the men's and women's recurve individual events respectively. The duo also finished 9th position in the recurve mixed team event after losing to top-ranked Korea.

Earlier, top archer Ruman Sana was eliminated from the Olympics mission when he went down a fighting 4-6 setpoints defeat to his Canadian rival Duenas Crispin in the second elimination round of recurve men's individual event.

The Bangladesh archery team is expected to return home by Qatar Airways on Sunday afternoon.