A day after suffering a disappointing campaign in the individual category, the Indian archers bounced back to get a chance to fight for two medals in the team competition of the Archery World Cup Stage I in Shanghai on Friday.
While the Deepika Kumari-led women’s recurve team reached the final, their men counterparts will be fighting for the bronze after a loss in the semi-finals.
The fourth-seeded Indian women will meet the seventh seeds Chinese Taipei in Sunday’s gold medal match. The men, seeded third, will take on the 9th seeds Great Britain in the play-off for the bronze.
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After equalling the world record of Olympic champion Ki Bo Bae, the former World No. 1 Deepika saw her individual challenge ending in the quarter-finals on Thursday. She pushed away the setback to combine with compatriots Laishram Bombayla Devi and Laxmirani Majhi to blank USA 6-0 in the pre-quarter finals on Friday.
Also read: Deepika Kumari: 10 things you need to know about the Indian Archer #KnowyourIndianOlympian
In the last-eight stage, they had to overcome a stiff resistance from the fifth seeds China and narrowly edged past them 5-4 with a 29-28 score in the shoot-off. In the semis, they upset the top seeds Germany 5-3 to book their berth in the final.
The men’s team consisting of former World Cup gold medal winner Jayanta Talukdar, Atanu Das and Mangal Singh Champia beat the 14th seeds France 5-3 to enter the quarter-finals. Their last-eight match proved to be an easy one as they prevailed 6-2 over Germany.
In the semi-finals, they went down in a hard-fought, thrilling encounter with the second seeds Netherlands. The Dutch eventually emerged a 5-4 winner that saw them dashing the hopes of the Indians 30-28 in the shoot-off.
The Indian recurve archers will be in contention for another medal as Deepika and Atanu had earlier made it to the bronze medal play-off in the recurve mixed team category. That is also scheduled for Sunday.
Compound teams disappoint
The Indian teams in the compound section, however, could not fare well. The women’s trio of Lily Chanu Paonam, Purvasha Sudhir Shende and Khushbu Dhayal defeated Malaysia 224-223 in the Round of 16 but crashed out in the next round, losing 220-229 to Germany.
The men’s team comprising Abhishek Verma, Chinna Raju Srither and Gurwinder Singh faltered in their opening match of the Round of 16 competition and went down 226-233 to Iran.
