For the first time the Indian recurve men’s and women’s teams have entered the final of the same World Cup.
The men’s outfit, comprising Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai and Jayanta Talukdar, proved too good for China (5-4; 29-27 in tie-breaker) and the Netherlands (5-4; 26-23 in tie-breaker) in the semifinals and quarterfinals respectively after breezing past Spain (5-1) in the first round of the team championship of the World Cup archery Stage 4 at Wroclaw in Poland on Friday.
The women’s team, consisting of Deepika Kumari, Laishram Bombayla Devi and Laxmirani Majhi, powered past Poland (6-0), Ukraine (5-4; 29-28 in tie-breaker) and Georgia 6-2 in the semifinals. Both teams will face Mexico in the final on Sunday.
Deepika Kumari, who was doing quite well in the individual event, unfortunately lost to Xu Jing of China in the semifinals and will play Tatiana Segina of Russia in the bronze medal play-off. Deepika went past Kavira Winter of Germany 6-2 in the quarterfinals before falling to Xu in the tie-breaker. Both shared 5 set points each. In the one-arrow tie-breaker, the Chinese woman’s arrow was found to be closer to the centre after both landed theirs in the 10-point circle.
Purvasha Sudhir Shende was eliminated by Sara Lopez of Colombia 141-143 in the quarterfinals of the compound individual. Pairing with Abhishek Verma, has made it to the compound mixed team final. The recurve mixed team is also in the bronze medal play-off. The compound teams lost in the second round after getting byes in the first round. The men lost to Mexico 227-230 and the women were defeated by Colombia 226-228.