NEW DELHI: India's compound women's team, consisting of Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Parneet Kaur, and Aditi Swami, delivered a stunning performance by defeating defending champions Colombia 220-216, securing their spot in the final of the archery World Championships in Berlin.
However, Indian hopes in the compound men's and mixed team events were dashed after narrow defeats to Netherlands and the USA, respectively.
In the men's event, Abhishek Verma, Ojas Deotale, and Prathamesh Jawkar lost in the quarterfinals to Netherlands with a score of 230-235. In the mixed team category, Deotale and Jyothi Surekha were narrowly defeated by the USA, losing 153-154 in the round of last-eight.
Earlier, Indian archers failed to secure Paris Olympics team quota places, as both the men's and women's recurve teams made quarterfinal exits. The men's recurve team lost to Korea 1-5, while the women's recurve team faced a 2-6 defeat against the Netherlands after taking an early lead.
Despite the setbacks, India's compound women's team's remarkable victory adds a positive note to their archery campaign in the World Championships.
The tournament remains an opportunity for athletes to compete for the top-three positions in team and individual events, securing a ticket to the next year's Olympics in Paris.
India's next hope to make the cut from the ongoing tournament will be in the individual section that gets underway on Thursday.
Army man Bommadevara will be the biggest hope, having grabbed the second seeding from the qualification round of men's individual recurve section.
India also disappointed in the recurve mixed team event, despite a favourable draw because of their fourth-place finish in the qualification.
The duo of Bommadevara and Ankita, who got a bye into the last-16, lost out to lower-ranked Italy 4-5 (35-37, 36-35, 39-37, 34-36) (16-17) in the shoot-off.
The next round of Paris Games qualifiers will be the Continental Games -- for India it would be the Hangzhou Asian Games in October where mixed team champions and two individuals per gender will make the cut.
The Asian Championship in November in Bangkok and next year's Antalya World Cup in June are the last two qualifying tournaments.
But in the worst case scenario, India will still stand a chance to qualify by virtue of their top-8 of World ranking, which will be awarded as per the list updated on June 24, 2024.
(With PTI inputs)
