KOLKATA: Olympian couple Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari finished on the podium in the just-concluded 41st Senior National Archery Championship at MA Stadium in Jammu. While the former ended up with a silver, his wife claimed a bronze in the men’s and women’s recurve individual categories respectively.
The duo once again made their presence felt before the final selection trials for the Asian Games after being dropped from the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) recently.
It was a golden finish for Haryana archers as Sachin Gupta and Ridhi were crowned the champions in the men’s and women’s events respectively. Sachin ended up with two more medals, claiming the bronze in the men’s team event and gold in the mixed team category teaming up with Bhajan Kaur.
Ridhi picked up her second gold in the women’s team competition.
In the individual event, PSPB archer Das, who qualified seventh, defeated Atul Verma (6-0), Ashutosh Mishra (6-0), veteran Tarundeep Rai (6-1) and Paras Hooda (6-4) before falling to fifth-ranked Sachin 2-6 in the summit clash. Haryana’s Hooda claimed the bronze beating Maharashtra’s Gaurav Lambe 7-1.
Deepika made a solid start qualifying second in the ranking round with a score of 647. The PSPB archer beat Diksha Nayak(6-0), Gurmehar Grewal (6-4) and Adity Jaiswal (6-4). She lost to eventual winner Riddhi 4-6 in the semifinal. However, the 27-year-old archer overcame a stiff challenge from Assam’s Promila Daimary 10-8 in the tie-break after both the players were tied 5-5 in the bronze-medal play-off match.
Riddhi defeated Dipti Kumari 7-3 to clinch the gold.
The men’s team gold was won by SSCB while All India Police side picked the silver. Jharkhand girls clinched the team silver ahead of All India Police archers.
The mixed team silver was won by Jharkhand while Bengal bagged the bronze.
