WC Archery Bronze medalists: Compound mixed pair

Following their semi-final exit, India’s mixed compound team will compete for a bronze medal, while the recurve team suffered yet another embarrassing performance at the World Cup (Stage Two) in Gwangju, South Korea on Friday.

Abhishek Verma and Avneet Kaur beat Denmark (157-155), Mexico (156-153) and Estonia (156-158) in the semi-finals before losing to 10th seed Estonia (156-158) in the bronze medal round.

To win the bronze medal for the third time in a row, India’s sixth-seeded mixed team will take on Turkey’s fourth-seeded team.

The women’s compound and recurve team events brought home bronze for India, and the compound men’s team will play in the final on Saturday for at least another silver.

Once again, the recurve archers fell short against their ‘nemesis’ Koreans, resulting in a forgettable performance that ended with a lone bronze medal in the women’s team event.

A new-look mixed team of Tarundeep Rai and Ridhi Phor was fielded by India in the absence of Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari, who have been dropped.

It was a tough loss for the seventh-seeded Indian team that had a bye into the quarterfinals. They beat Japan 5-3, but then fell to Germany 1-5 in the next round (37-37, 32-35, 36-37).

Former individual gold medalist Jayanta Talukdar and his experienced teammate Rai were defeated by the same Korean opponent Kim Woojin in their World Cup comeback after about five years.

In the pre-quarters, the two-time Olympic gold medalist defeated Rai 2-6 (27-29, 29-28, 28-29, 27-30).

With a 5-1 lead in the quarterfinals, Talukdar took the first two sets and raced to 5-6 in the shootout, but lost 5-6 (29-26, 29-27, 28-28, 26-29, 26-27)

Despite a strong comeback by the Korean to tie the match at 5-5 in the fourth set, Talukdar was unable to close it out and lost in a shoot-off. Woojin’s arrow was the winner because it was closer to the center.

Women’s recurve individual shooters Komalika Bari and Phor showed that they still have a long way to go before they are competitive at the highest level with their performances in this section.

Komalika, a two-time youth world champion, was the biggest disappointment as she lost 4-6 to Yasemin Anagoz of Turkey in the first round (26-27, 25-27, 27-26, 23-25, 27-26).

To make it to the quarterfinals, 17-year-old national champion Phor had to face another Korean, Lee Gahyun—5-6 (28-27, 29-30, 26-27, 27-27) (7-8) in a shootout battle.