Indians shine at Archery World Cup Final: Abhishek, Deepika bag silver
Abhishek Verma and Deepika Kumari bagged silver medals at the 2015 Archery World Cup Final in Mexico City over the weekend. While Verma won India’s first compound medal ever at a World Cup Final, it was Kumari’s fourth silver medal in five years in the premier competition.
The 26-year-old Verma lost a close title battle to Turkey’s Demir Elmaagacli 143-145. Enroute to the final, the Indian world No. 7 appeared in top form as he sunk Mario Cardoso with a perfect 150 in the semifinals, who in turn had upset top-ranked Dutch Mike Schloesser in the quarterfinals. Earlier, Verma had qualified for the final after winning the World Cup qualifier in Wroclaw, Poland.
Verma began the gold match with a 10, and took a one-point lead with a strong 29 in his first end. The lead changed hands after each of the following four ends. But a poor eight in the second set from the Indian allowed the Turk to gain the upper hand at 57-56. However, the Indian rallied back with a perfect 30 as he regained the one-point lead at 86-85 after nine arrows.
But, Elmaagacli pulled away with two consecutive perfect ends of 30 out of 30 points to first win back the lead, and then put the gold medal out of Verma’s reach.
Verma was visibly thrilled about his silver. Speaking about the 150-point match he shot in the semifinals, he said, “You never know when the perfect score is going to happen. Sometimes you just have a good feeling and this is what happened to me. It’s been a great experience.”
The only other member of the Indian contingent, 21-year-old Kumari lost 2-6 to top-seeded Korean Choi Misun in the final. The 19-year-old Misun fired three straight 29-point sets as against the Indian’s 29-point effort in the opener to push the Indian to the wall at 5:1. Both archers shot 29 in the last to split points, but the Korean ace had, by then, taken an unassailable lead.
World No.12 Kumari had previously finished runner-up at Istanbul in 2011, Toyko 2012 and Paris 2013 editions of the World Cup Final. “I wish I had won gold,” Kumari told reporters.”It’s something that doesn’t seem to happen to me. My arrows went up. I tried to fix my sight but nothing worked.”
Earlier, Kumari beat Japan’s Kawanaka Kaori in the quarterfinals and Le Chien-Ying of Chinese Taipei in the semifinals by an identical 6:4 margin. The Indian’s two gold medals at the global arena came at the Commonwealth Games in 2010 and the Antalya stage of the Archery World Cup two years later.
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