Picture Credit: Twitter
Hours after winning recurve team silver for India, Dhiraj Bommadevara has won another individual recurve medal for the country. He defeated Ilfat Abdullin of Kazakhstan 7-3 to win India another medal at the 2023 Archery World Cup Stage 1. In the second round, Dhiraj shot 29 to take a lead 2-1 in the bronze medal quest.
However, in the third round, Abdullin equalised at 3-3 and the Indian lost it 28-29. In the next two rounds, Dhiraj shot 29 out of a possible 30 to make his place at the podium in Antalya. He had lost his semifinal to sixth seed Dan Olaru 4-6 in the semifinal.
In his World Cup debut, the 20-year-old Army man took down Ilfat 7-3 (28-28, 29-26, 28-29, 29-27, 29-27) to bag the individual bronze. Earlier in the semifinal quest, Dhiraj missed out on the silver medal as he squandered a 4-0 lead against Dan Olaru of Moldova and went down 6-4 (27-26, 28-27, 28-29, 26-28, 28-30).
On the other hand, in the men's recurve team competition, the Indian team of Atanu Das, Dhiraj Bommadevara and Tarundeep Rai went down to China’s Li Zhongyuan, Qi Xiangshuo and Wei Shaoxuan 4-5 and settled for silver. The trio went down 4-5 (54-55, 50-56, 59-58, 56-55, 28-28*) with the Chinese team hitting an X (closer to the center) in a shoot off gave the set a dramatic finish and won gold.
With this, India ended their campaign with two gold, one silver and one bronze from the meet.
