HERMOSILLO: India archer Prathamesh Jawkar missed out on the gold medal by the barest of the margins and settled for silver in the Archery World Cup Final 2023.
World No 14 Jawkar was facing a major challenge against the 10th-ranked Mathias Fullerton of Denmark in the gold medal clash.
The game ended in a 148-148 tie after five sets. While both archers hit a 10 in the shoot-off, but Fullerton was declared the winner as his shot was closer to the centre.
Jawkar kicked off the day with a convincing 149-141 victory against world No 5, Italian Miguel Becerra, in the quarter-final, according to Olympics.com.
The Indian then shot a perfect 150 against world No 1 Mike Schloesser of the Netherlands and beat the second-seeded archer by a single point to book his place in the final.
Abhishek Verma, who was the first Indian men’s compound archer to win a silver at the Archery World Cup Final in 2015, missed out on a medal after losing his bronze medal clash.
Verma defeated Sawyer Sullivan in the tie-breaker of the quarter-finals after scores were level at 146. In the semi-finals, the Indian ended up losing to 150-147 gold medallist Fullerton.
Verma produced his best performance of the day in the bronze medal match against the American Schloesser, scoring 149 points in five sets. However, Schloesser emerged victorious after shooting a perfect 150.
On the other hand, in the women’s compound event, reigning world champion Aditi Gopichand Swami suffered an upset in the quarter-finals against Dane Tanja Gellenthien.
After the scores were level at 145 in five sets, Gellenthien progressed to the semi-finals with a 10-9 win in the tie-breaker.
Jyothi Surekha Vennam, who was part of the team that won a gold medal at the world championships in Berlin earlier this year, crashed out of the competition in the quarter-finals after losing to defending champion Sara Lopez of Colombia.
Lopez shot a 10 on 14 occasions to finish with 149 points. Jyothi’s start was a bit shaky but managed to get 144 points, still it wasn’t sufficient for her to progress the Colombian archer to progress to the next round.
Sara Lopez went on to win her eighth world title, as she defeated Tanja Gellenthien by 143-142 in the final. Dafne Quintero of the host nation defeated the Republic of Korea’s Cho Su A 144-142 to clinch the bronze medal. (ANI)