India men's and women's recurve teams win bronze at Archery World Cup Stage 4 in Paris

Paris: Indian recurve archers clinched two bronze medals in the men’s and women’s team events at the World Cup Stage 4 in Paris on Thursday. Indian men’s recurve team of Dhiraj Bommadevara, Atanu Das and Tushar Shelke defeated Spain’s Andres Temino, Yun Sanchez and Pablo Acha 6-2 (54-56, 57-55, 56-54, 57-55) in the bronze medal play-off.

The second-seeded Indian men’s team misfired an arrow in their semi-final loss against Chinese Taipei to miss out on a gold medal match. The Indian trio lost out in straight sets 0-6 (54-56, 47-58, 55-56). The women’s team also met with a similar fate as they put up a sloppy show to be blanked 0-6 (52-57, 47-56, 52-53) by their Chinese Taipei rivals in the semi-final. The trio of Ankita Bhakat, Bhajan Kaur and Simranjeet Kaur hit thrice in the red circle (8-8-7) in the first set, while the second was worse when they shot three 7s and one 8 to manage a poor 47. Chinese Taipei also shot a poor 53 in the third set but Indians failed to improve, and lost the set by one point with three 8s and went out of a gold medal contention. In the bronze medal playoff, the Indian women’s team overcame a two-set deficit to get past Mexico 5-4 (52-55, 52-53, 55-52, 54-52) (27-25) in the shoot-off.