Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari, who recently got married to each other, won individual gold medals at the ongoing Archery World Cup stage 1.
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Newly-wedded couple Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari won individual gold medals at the Archery World Cup Stage 1, Guatemala on Sunday in the recurve men and women’s events respectively. Das and Deepika, who got married on June 30 last year, automatically qualified for the Archery World Cup final after their triumphs.
Former world number one Deepika beat Mexico’s Alejandra Valencia 7-3 to claim her 3rd individual World Cup gold. Meanwhile, Das outclassed Spanish World Cup debutant Daniel Castro 6-4 to claim his maiden individual World Cup medal.
Locked 4-4 in the shoot-off, the Indian team comprising seasoned Deepika Kumari, Ankita Bhakat and Komalika Bari shot 27 to edge out their Mexican rivals by one point and claim their first World Cup team gold after seven years. This is Deepika’s fifth World Cup stage event team gold medal.
Deepika showed utmost composure to drill a perfect 10 in the final arrow of the shoot-off to put pressure on the 2012 London Olympics silver medallist Aida Roman who needed a nine but only to drift away for a poor eight score.
This was India’s fifth recurve women’s team gold in World Cup having won in Shanghai- 2011, Medellin-2013, Wroclaw-2013 and 2014 previously.
The performance rubbed off on the mixed pair duo of Das and Ankita Bhakat as they bagged a mixed pair bronze, upsetting top seed USA 6-2 with yet another fightback at the Sports Complex Los Arcos here.
But the real icing on the cake came in the individual events later in the day when country’s top archery couple ‘Dee-Das’ bagged two individual golds in their respective events.
India won two individual gold medals and one team gold medal. After making a return to the international circuit this is Indian recurve archers’ best World Cup finish.
Also, this was India’s best-ever individual recurve men’s result since Jayanta Talukdar triumphed in Croatia way back in 2009.
