Sydney, September 18": Shuttler Pullela Gopi Chand and middleweight boxer Jitender Kumar provided the high points on an otherwise dismal day for India at the Olympic Games here on Monday.In the morning, National champion Gopichand stormed into the men's singles third round after getting a first round bye by fighting his way to a hard-earned 15-3, 10-15, 15-7 win over Ukraine's Vladislav Druzchenko in under an hour.World No10 Gopi, hailing from Hyderabad, will meet second-seeded Hendrawan of Indonesia in the third round.In the evening when the Indian spirits were down, 23-year-old Jitender, the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games silver medallist, pulverised Donald Grant Orr of Canada into submission and forced the referee to stop the unequal contest in the third round when he was 9-3 up.But the other Indians continued to put up a pathetic show proving to be unequal to match the best at this level of competition as India faced reverses in the shooting range, swimming pool, weightlifting arena and the ping pong game.Teenager Abhinav Bindra, at 17 the youngest shooter at the Olympics, failed to qualify for the 10 metre men's air rifle final by one point and finished joint 11th with two others after tallying 590 out of 600 points.The Delhi youngster, recipient of an International Olympic Committee scholarship, performed much below his potential (596, a World junior record made at the Munich World Cup earlier this year) and could not cause any ripples on his Olympic debut.In swimming, Bangalore-based Nisha Millet was nowhere near her best effort of 2:06.62 and clocked 2:08.89 in the women's 200M Freestyle event preliminary heats and also failed to qualify for the next stage. She finished on 37th position from 39 starters.Weightlifter Sanamacha Chanu finished sixth because of her bodyweight after tying with two other lifters, Franca Gbodo of Nigeria and Win Swe Swe of Myanmar, for fourth place in the total lift (195 kg) in the 53 class women's competition.Chanu cleared 85 kg in snatch and 119 in clean and jerk for her overall effort of 195 which also fell short of her personal best by 2.5 kg.In table tennis, India's tale of woes ended with the elimination of National number one Chetan Baboor and National women's champion Poulomi Ghatak at the preliminary stage in singles and that of Baboor and his partner S Raman in men's doubles.Baboor went down to New Zealand's Peter Jackson after a good fight 23-25 18-21 21-23 in his final Group C league match while Poulomi lost to Ann Boileau of France 12-21 9-21 9-21 in a Group L women's singles league match.
