KOLKATA: There's no stopping the Indian compound women's archery team as they remained undefeated in this World Cup season. The trio of Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Aditi Swami and Parneet Kaur claimed a hat-trick of gold medals with a win over Estonia at WC Stage III in Antalya, Turkey, on Saturday.
However, their men's counterpart first went down to Turkey in the semifinal and then lost the bronze-medal match to France. It's India's consecutive bronze medal loss as Prathamesh Bhalchandra Fuge, Priyansh and Abhishek Verma also went down to Australia at Yecheon in Stage II.
However, Priyansh picked up India's second medal when he narrowly lost the men's individual final to world No. 1 Mike Schloesser.
It was smooth ride for the Indian women as they qualified as the top-seeded team.
After getting a first-round bye, they got past El Salvador 235-227 and the hosts 234-227 to set up the summit clash with Estonia. In a rather one-sided final, the trio prevailed over Estonia's Lisell Jaatma, Meeri-Marita Paas and Maris Tetsmann 232-229.
They had not only won gold at Stage 1 in Shanghai and Stage 2 in Yecheon but also ended last season with the top finish in Paris.
The women overcame extreme hot conditions hitting the bulls eye five out of six times in the penultimate end and four times in the final end to assert their supremacy.
"Despite the heat, we kept our focus on our shots and rhythm," individual World champion Aditi told World Archery.
Later in the day, rising compound archer Priyansh failed to defeat Dutch heavyweight Schloesser for a second time this season and had to be content with his second World Cup silver. At the season-opening World Cup in Shanghai in April this year, Priyansh had lost to World No. 8 Nico Wiener of Austria 147-150 in the final.
Priyansh dropped a point in the opening set and that proved decisive as he could not overcome the deficit with Schloesser shooting a series of 10s to clinch the match 149-148.
In the semifinal, the 21-year-old fired 15 perfect-10 shots to knock out World No. 2 Mathias Fullerton by one point. Priyanash also made his maiden World Cup Final by finishing third on the circuit this season.
