Paris Olympics 2024 Day 2 Live Updates: The vivacious Manu Bhaker shone the brightest with her historic shooting bronze while the seasoned P V Sindhu and debutant Nikhat Zareen held out promise for more podium finishes going forward as women athletes dazzled in India’s account-opening performance on the second day of the Olympic Games on Sunday.

Three years after she left the range in Tokyo as a broken 19-year-old, whose weapon malfunctioned in the qualification of women’s 10m air pistol competition, Bhaker became the first Indian markswoman to grab an Olympic medal, in the same event at Chateauroux’s National Shooting Centre.

Her medal placed India at the joint 18th spot with South Africa, Hungary and Spain in the overall standings.

It could well be a very different story this time as Ramita Jindal and Arjun Babuta have also entered the final of 10m air rifle women’s and men’s finals respectively.

Chasing a third successive Olympic medal, Sindhu showed just why she is entitled to the tag of ‘national treasure’ in Indian sports.

She was all class in a resounding straight games win over Maldives’ Fathimath Abdul Razzaq in their opening women’s singles group stage match in Paris.

The gulf between the two players was evident as Sindhu took just 29 minutes to dispatch her lower-ranked opponent 21-9 21-6 in the Group M fixture.

If Sindhu was all dominance, Zareen was all tenacity in her 50kg category opener in the boxing ring.

The 28-year-old Hyderabadi entered the pre-quarterfinals after beating Germany’s Maxi Carina Kloetzer in Paris.

She would need this tenacity even more as next up for her is top-seeded Asian Games and reigning flyweight world champion Wu Yu of China, who received a first round bye, on Thursday.

The 29-year-old Manika Batra dominated Anna Hursey of Great Britain in her round of 64 women’s singles match to win 11-8 12-10 11-9 9-11 11-5.

In the process, Manika equalled her feat at the Tokyo Olympics where she had become the first woman table tennis player from India to make it to the round of 32 in singles.

India’s top-ranked woman paddler Sreeja Akula also entered the round of 32 with a clinical 4-0 win over Sweden’s Christina Kallberg.

Sreeja, who had created history by becoming the first Indian paddler to win a WTT Contender singles title, registered an 11-4 11-9 11-7 11-8 victory over the Swede.

But 42-year-old A Sharath Kamal, making his fifth Olympic appearance, lost 2-4 (12-10 9-11 6-11 7-11 11-8 10-12) to Deni Kozul of Slovenia, who is ranked 86 places below him to crash out of the Games in the singles event.

Balraj Panwar progressed to the quarterfinals of the men’s single sculls rowing competition after finishing second in Repechage 2.

Panwar clocked 7 minutes 12.41 seconds to finish behind Monaco’s Quentin Antognelli who clocked 7:10:00. The first two finishers in each repechage qualify for the quarterfinals to be held on Tuesday.

The archers flattered to deceive, at least on Sunday. The women’s team of former world number one Deepika Kumari, and the debutant duo of Ankita Bhakat and Bhajan Kaur went down 0-6 to the Netherlands in the quarterfinals.

At the Roland Garros, the usually indefatigable Sumit Nagal made a first-round exit after losing 2-6 6-4 5-7 to Frenchman Corentin Moutetin in a contest that lasted two hours and 28 minutes.