Parth Salunkhe becomes first Indian to win Youth World Championship in recurve category

The 19-year-old from Satara in Maharashtra provided the perfect icing on the cake by defeating a Korean in the Under-21 men’s recurve individual final, here on Sunday.

Indian archer Parth Salunkhe (middle) poses with his gold medal after becoming Under-21 recurve archery world champion at the Youth World Championships in Limerick, Ireland, on July 9, 2023. | Photo Credit: PTI

Top-ranked Parth Salunkhe warded off a strong challenge from Korean Song In Jun 7-3 in the final to become the recurve under-21 men’s individual champion in the World youth archery championships in Limerick, Ireland, on Sunday. He was the first Indian male archer to achieve the feat.

Fighting back twice, Salunkhe hit the bull’s eye twice to beat the Korean for the world title. Earlier, he received two byes and got the better of Czech Republic’s Richard Krejci 7-1, Turkey’s Mustafa Ozdemir 6-5 (9*-9, shot closer to the centre), Chinese Taipei’s Yang Kai-Han 6-4 and Germany’s Mathias Kramer 6-4.

Bhajan Kaur defeated Chinese Taipei’s Su Hsin-yu 7-1 to take the women’s under-21 individual bronze.

Indian archers gathered the most number of medals, a total of 11 including six golds, one silver and four bronzes. It finished second behind Korea, which collected six golds and four silvers.

The results:

Recurve: Individual: Men: Gold medal match: Parth Salunkhe bt Song In Jun (Kor) 7-3 (26-26, 25-28, 28-26, 29-26, 28-26); Women: Bronze medal match: Bhajan Kaur bt Su Hsin-yu (Tpe) 7-1.