India’s Deepika Kumari, Ankita Bhakat and Simranjeet Kaur won silver medal at the recurve women’s team final at Paris Archery World Cup Stage 3 on Sunday.
Chinese Taipei had the better day on Sunday, finding the inner rings more consistently than the Indians, winning the final in three sets with a score of 5-1. Deepika Kumari, in her first World Cup appearance of the season, shot well but otherwise the team couldn’t find enough 10s on the day.
Here are the closing stages of the final:
The Chinese Taipei team, which had won bronze in Antalya, was in fine form throughout the summit clash, scoring three sets of 56. While the Indians shot a 56 in the second set to put some pressure on the opponents, a clutch 10 saw Chinese Taipei split points. And then a 53 for India again in the third set meant that there wasn’t much scoreboard pressure on their opponents who closed things out in three sets.
Indian archers did not have the best showing in the qualification rounds at the start of this week in Paris, seeding 13th among 19 teams. But they had reached the final by defeating eight seeds Turkey in the last four. It was an impressive result as it is, but even more so as Turkey had just defeated the mighty Korean team that included Olympic champion An San, in the quarterfinal.
On eliminations day, the Indian trio averaged nearly 57 points a set through three matches against Ukraine, Great Britain and Turkey.
The women’s recurve team had won bronze medal earlier in the season at the Gwangju World Cup Stage 2 event.
On Saturday in Paris, Jyothi Surekha Vennam and Abhishek Verma won the compound mixed team gold medal while Jyothi then won the individual silver.
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