World Archery C'ships: India misses podium in Women’s Recurve Team

Indian women's recurve team came close to upsetting the Olympic champion South Korea and ended their 10-year-old medal drought at the World Archery C'ships on Wednesday.

The Indian trio of Deepika Kumari, Ankita Bhakat, and Gatha Khadke lost 3-5 to South Korea, scoring 56 in the final series when they needed 58 to force a shootoff.

India started the match poorly as debutant 15-year-old Gatha, rattled by nerves at her first World Championships, scored a 6 and an 8 on her initial two shots.

Korea took advantage of these scores and won the opening set 54-51.

But then, India bounced back strongly in the next two sets and scored two consecutive sets of 57 each to level the match score at 3-3by winning one set and tying the other.

In the final set, Korea demonstrated its class, shooting the highest score of the match, 58, which put a lot of pressure on India, who they matched throughout, but eventually lost by 2 points in the end.

With this, India had a heartbreaking 4th-place finish and failed to add India's first recurve women's team medal since the silver from the 2015 edition.

No Medal in Men's Recurve Individual

Indian men's recurve archers had a disastrous outing at these championships, as they exited the first round of the team event and also failed to advance to the last 16 of the Individual event.

The world no.15 Dhiraj Boomadevara lost 2-6 to former Olympic champion and reigning World champion Mete Gazoz of Turkiye, while Neeraj Chauhan bowed down 0-6 to Uzbekistan's Bekzod Bobarajabov.

Youngster Rahul was the sole Indian to advance past the first round, but his journey ended in the round of 32 with a shootoff loss to Georgia's Aleksandre Machavariani after two tight victories in earlier rounds.