Khairul Anuar Mohamad missed an opportunity to win Malaysia's first-ever individual archery medal at the Asian Games as he crashed out from the men's individual recurve quarter-finals on Thursday.

Reaching the semi-finals would've guaranteed the 26-year-old at least a bronze medal.

The world no. 21, who was part of the recurve men's team that scored an historic first archery medal for Malaysia when they won silver in Incheon four years ago, was beaten 3-7 in five sets by Kazakhstan's Ilfat Abdullin.

After coming from behind to draw 3-3 in the third set, he lost the final two sets, including the last one to a perfect score of 30.



It was his second defeat to the Kazakhstani archer, having lost 0-6 at the Archery Asia Cup in Bangkok earlier this year.

After finishing in 16th place in the ranking round, Khairul had beaten Qatar's Ali Salem (6-0) and Myanmar's Oo Htike Lin (7-1) to reach the quarters.

He was the only Malaysian recurve archer to make it to the quarter-finals, with Nor Hasrin Kamal, Ghapar Nur Aliya and Mazlan Nuramalia Haneesha all losing in the last 32.