The Indian men’s compound team remained in fray for a bronze medal, even as all the recurve archers continued to misfire at the World Cup Stage 4 here on Friday.
The fifth seeded Indian trio of Abhishek Verma, Aman Saini and Amanjeet Singh started their campaign by defeating Spain 228-222 before getting the better of 13th seeded Sweden team 231-229 in quarterfinals.
However, they failed to overcome the top seed USA and lost 228—233 in the semi—finals to make it to the third-fourth place play-off match.
In the bronze medal play-offs, India will take on lower ranked Germany tomorrow.
The compound women’s team of Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Trisha Deb and Snehal Mandhare, seeded third, got a bye to reach the quarterfinals. But they lost to 11th seed South Africa 28-29 in a nail-biting finish in the shoot-off.
The compound mixed pair team also went down in the quarterfinals, against Mexico 149-156.
In the compound individual section, only Verma and Jyothi could reach the last-eight rounds, while all others made early exits. Sixth seed Verma lost to third seed Braden Gellenthien of USA 146-148, while fifth seed Jyothi was stunned by 13th seed Sarah Sonnichsen of Denmark 145-147.
Meanwhile, Indian recurve archers came up with dismal performance once again.
It has been more than year --Stage 3 Antalya, June 2016--when India won a World Cup medal in recurve section and the woeful form extended to Berlin as well with both men and women’s teams making quarterfinal exits.
The 18-year-old Sachin Gupta, playing in his second World Cup, showed a lot of promise as he thrashed two-time Olympic team silver medallist Jake Kaminski of USA 6-0. But the Haryana youngster’s fine run was halted in the quarterfinals by Crispin Duenas of Canada.
Gupta had a poor start and trailed 0-4. Even though he tried to regain the lost momentum with a good effort in the third set, where he shot three perfect 10s including two X (closest to centre), the third seeded Canadian used all his experience to eke out a 6-2 result.
Former World No. 1 Deepika Kumari also made a good start with a third-place finish in the qualification round, but was also eliminated in the last-eight stage.
The only bright spot for the Indian top archer was when she ousted 2012 London Olympics silver medallist Aida Roman of Mexico 7-3 in round three.
Deepika next defeated Bryony Pitman of Britain 6-2 but could not get past Korean sixth seed Chae Young Kang, losing 2-6.
India’s best hope in recurve section was the second seed women’s team. But the Indian eves fell by the wayside in the quarters along with the men’s team.
Making a comeback after more than a year, India’s senior most archer Tarundeep Rai could not overcome USA’s three-time Olympic medallist Brady Ellison in a tight round three battle.
The duo were locked 5-5 after the fourth set and Ellison sealed the issue 9-8 in the shoot-off.
India’s World Cup campaign so far has produced one team gold (Shanghai Stage 1) and one mixed team bronze (Antalya Stage 2)--all in the compound sections.
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