Twenty-one-year-old debutant B. Dhiraj performed well to collect an individual bronze medal and was part of the Indian men’s recurve team which claimed a silver on the concluding day of the Archery World Cup Stage-1 in Antalya on Sunday.
Dhiraj was part of the Indian side, also comprising seasoned archers Atanu Das and Tarundeep Rai, which lost 4-5 (54-55, 50-56, 59-58, 56-55, 28-28) to China, returning to event after four years, in the title clash via shoot-off.
India, which won a team gold way back in Shanghai in 2010, made a superb comeback from 0-4 to level the match 4-4 and forced a shoot-off. Both teams shot 28 apiece but China won the tie-breaker because of the only X it got.
In the individual competitions, Dhiraj won the first two sets before losing 4-6 (27-26, 28-27, 28-29, 26-28, 28-30) to Olympian Dan Olaru of Moldova in the semifinals.
Dhiraj raised the bar and defeated Kazakhstan’s Ilfat Abdullin 7-3 (28-28, 29-26, 28-29, 29-27, 29-27) in a closely-fought duel to take the bronze medal.
Indian archers had bagged two gold medals in compound events on Saturday.
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