The Indian star archers Deepika Kumari and Atanu Das should start from scratch after their debacle at the Olympic Games in Tokyo at the World Cup finals on Thursday. The two-day flagship competition will also mark the return of the duo who failed to qualify for the Indian senior team for the world championship that has just ended in the same location.
After the duo was eliminated from the Indian squad, the duo competed alone at SAI, Kolkata, and the two are supposed to redeem themselves for their medal-free excursion at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. An Olympic medal is elusive for Indian archers despite their impressive preparation for the Games.
As world number one, Deepika Kumari, who was the only Indian female archer in combat, made a quarterfinal match with a tame loss to Korean sensation An San. That was the best among the Indian men, but also lost in the pre-quarterfinal as she was in Korea the men’s team and in the mixed pair segment.
With the losses fresh in the back of their minds, the duo reportedly want to start over in the two-day World Cup final. Deepika, who slipped to second in the world rankings, has won four silver and one bronze in seven World Cup finals, and it remains to be seen whether she can keep up with Dola’s masterpiece Banerjee.
Dola is the only Indian woman who won a gold medal in the first competition in 2007. Deepika will debut against 23-year-old Russian Svetlana Gomboeva, who just won her silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
For Das this is his first appearance in the World Cup final and he has a slight draw against the German Maximilian Weckmüller, who won a silver medal at the second World Cup stop in Lausanne, Switzerland. The best eight archers from the four stages of the World Cup qualify for the World Cup final, in which a total of 32 competitors compete in the areas of recurve and compound for men and women.
This time around, India would take part in the compound section, where Abhishek Verma is the only qualifier after winning a gold medal in the third stage of the World Cup in Paris. The gold medalist of the 2014 Asian Games, Verma, will face number 4 in the world rankings Braden Gellenthien from the USA in the quarter-finals today.
Verma won two individual medals – a silver medal (2015) and a bronze medal (2018) – in the World Cup final and he won a silver medal in the mixed duet World Cup final with Jyothi Surekha Vennam in 2018. The draw: Recurve men: Brady Ellison (USA) versus Mauro Nespoli (ITA); Atanu Das (IND) versus Maximilian Weckmüller (GER); Jack Williams (USA) versus Yun Sanchez (ESP); Mete Gazoz (TUR) versus Nicholas D’Amour (VIR).
Recurve women: Deepika Kumari (IND) versus Svetlana Gomboeva (RUS); Elena Osipova (RUS) versus Ana Vazquez (MEX); Michelle Kroppen (GER) versus Casey Kaufhold (USA); Lisa Unruh (GER) versus Mackenzie Brown (USA). Compound men: Mike Schloesser (NED) against Adrien Gontier (FRA); Mathias Fullerton (DEN) versus Jozef Bosansky (SVK); Braden Gellenthien (USA) versus Abhishek Verma (IND); Kris Schaff (USA) Federico Pagnoni (ITA).
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