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 silver on the concluding day of the Archery World Cup Stage-1 in Antalya on Sunday.
The Indian team of Dhiraj, Atanu Das and Tarundeep Rai, 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.
