Archery World Cup: Indian men’s compound trio pumped up after flurry of gold medals in Asian Games year-Sports News , Firstpost

(From left) Indian compound archers Rajat Chauhan, Aman Saini and Abhishek Verma pose with their gold medals during Archery World Cup Stage 1 in Antalya on Saturday. SAI Sonepat/Twitter

Indian archery tasted its first international success of the season on Saturday morning when its men’s compound trio of Rajat Chauhan, Abhishek Verma, and Aman Saini defeated France in the final of the Antalya World Cup Stage 1 to claim the gold medal.

While the Indians have performed extraordinarily on their way to the final with some excellent scores of 237, 236, and 235 (out of a possible 240) but the final jitters did find them as they trailed early in the game to the French trio of Jean Phillipe Boulch, Quentin Baraer and Adrien Gontier.

To the credit of the French, they did make the most out of their opponents’ slip-up by building a three-point cushion by the end of the set two. However, a series of six 10-pointers from the Indian trio helped them cut back the gap to just a point.

“That’s what a final does to you,” Rajat told Firstpost from Antalya. “Despite all those high-scoring figures to reach the final, the pressure of the big game still found us. And it took us as long as the second set to realise we are taking this too seriously and need to relax a bit. We reminded ourselves this is not a war but just another match and it’s something we are good at.”

The team’s senior-most archer Abhishek, on the other hand, didn’t lose his cool and with the years of experience that the 32-year-old has, the three-time World Cup gold medallist knew he just need to do his best.

“It was like any other archery match, a roller-coaster ride,” said Abhishek. “Despite not getting a good start, I knew we will have our chances if we individually focus on doing our best. And that third set with all 10s was the key moment that allowed us to be in the grip of the match.”

However, Abhishek stressed that while it’s a good beginning to the season, this is only the first step they took into the year and the ultimate goals remain their ‘Olympics’ in Asian Games. To rejig the reader’s memory, compound archery, unlike recurve archery, is a non-Olympic event and was included in Asian Games in 2014.

“This win was a morale-booster but we have a long season ahead. The next stop for us is the World Cup Stage 2 next month, where we will come across our main opponents (archery powerhouse Korea) and will be a good test for us as far as Asian Games is concerned, that’s our Olympics,” said the three-time Asian Games medallist.

The youngest member of the team, Aman pointed out that the victory was hard-earned but not exactly their best performance by their high standard. As pointed out by teammate Rajat earlier in an interview, the 24-year-old from Delhi said they are the best compound trio in India and the scoreline doesn’t reflect that as they went for the world record.

“Happy to win the world record but it leaves a bitter taste in our mouth too as we went for the team world record. The score of 232 was far below our expectations as we wanted to score all the 240 points on the offer and create the record. In an Asian Games year, we want to remain in our top form and after our performances earlier in the week, we felt confident about it,” said the archer from Delhi, who will now head for Khelo India University Games in Bengaluru.

The same trio matched the world record of 239 at the same venue and competition in 2019 when they defeated Italy 239-233 in their opening round match.

As far as this World Cup is concerned, Abhishek, along with female archer Ridhi, missed out on a mixed team bronze medal as they lost to Croatia by a point at 156-157 on Saturday.

On Sunday, recurve mixed team of Tarundeep Rai and Muskan Kirar will compete in the gold medal match against Great Britain. However, none of the archers could qualify for the medal rounds of the individual events of both disciplines.

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