The Indian compound and recurve teams lost to the Netherlands and Mexico respectively in the quarter-finals of the mixed teams events in the ongoing Archery World Cup Stage 4 in Paris, France on Friday.
In the recurve individual qualification rounds, no Indian, either in the men’s or women’s category, progressed to the semi-finals stage. Dhiraj Bommadevara was the only Indian to reach the quarter-final stage, but lost to Baptiste Addis of France to end any hopes of India winning an Olympic quota at the competition in Paris.
The compound men’s and women’s teams are in contention for a medal when they face the US and Mexico respectively in the gold medal matches on Saturday.
Jyothi Vennam is the only individual Indian archer left in the competition across categories when she takes on Ella Gibson of Great Britain in the compound women’s individual semi-final, also on Saturday.
The pair of Vennam and Ojas Pravin Deotale had ranked first in the compound mixed team rankings with individual scores of 710 and 713 respectively and a total team score of 1423.
Getting a bye in the first round, Vennam and Deotale overcame a tricky challenge from Sofia Paiz and Roberto Hernandez of El Salvador to take the lead in the third End and progress to the quarter-finals, beating them 158-156.
The duo faced a tough challenge in the form of Dutch duo Mike Schloesser and Sanne de Laat. Schloesser had previously been beaten by Deotale en route to the Indian’s world title at the Archery World Championships in Berlin earlier this month.
Vennam and Deotale recovered from falling one point behind after the second End and both sides were evenly matched to enter into a shoot-out after four Ends finished with a tied score of 158-158. The shoot-out also ended up being tied at 20 but the Netherlands progressed to the semi-finals because of their attempts being closer to the bulls-eye.
In the recurve mixed team qualifications, India were ranked seventh with Bommadevara and Bhajan Kaur scoring 686 and 662 respectively for a team score of 1348.
Finishing in the top ten rankings also gave the Indian recurve pairing a bye for the first round. Kaur and Bommadevara were able to get past the Japanese duo of Sugimoto Tomomi and Saito Fumiya, winning their second round match 5-3.
The Indian duo were then up against Mexico’s Alejandra Valencia and Matias Grande and weren’t able to get into the game at all with the Mexicans dominating to win 5-1 over the Indians.
The recurve individual qualification rounds began soon after the mixed team events with Kaur and Bommadevara getting byes in the first round after being ranked 17th and fourth in the women’s and men’s categories respectively.
Bommadevara had a comfortable 7-1 win in the opening round against Alex Wise of Great Britain, before reaching the quarter-final stage with a tight 6-5 win over Romain Fichet of France. But the Indian, who had won two medals in his debut World Cup stage in Turkey earlier this year, was unable to progress past Addis and lost 4-6 to crash out in the quarter-finals and end any hopes of a medal for India in recurve archery.
Atanu Das (sixth) was also in contention in the men’s category for India while the other Indian women recurve archers were Simranjeet Kaur (21st) and Ankita Bhakat (23rd).
Simranjeet won only one set in her opening Round of 32 match losing 2-6 to Dutch archer Fleur Van de Ven.
Bhajan Kaur meanwhile won her opening match beating Turkey’s Fatima Marasli 6-2 before losing 2-6 to Japan’s Tomomi. Bhakat also went down a similar route, winning her opening match 6-2 against Netherlands’ Gaby Schloesser before going down in a close 5-6 loss to Korea’s Choi Misun
Das also won his opening match 6-2 against Poland’s Konrad Kupczak, but couldn’t move past local hero Jean-Charles Valladont, losing 1-5 to the French archer.