Indian mixed pair team in bronze play-off; recurve archers return empty-handed

Compound mixed pair of Abhishek Verma and Jyothi Surekha Vennam kept India in the hunt for a second medal, advancing to the bronze play-off at the stage four of the Archery World Cup here today.

The recurve archers, on the other hand, continued their poor show ahead of the Asian Games, making a quarterfinal exit in the mixed pair event.

The duo of Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari, who qualified as 10th seed, were blown away by the Chinese Taipei pair of Tan Ya-Ting and Wei Chun-Heng 0-6.

A day after women's compound team advanced to the final to be assured of a medal, Jyothi partnered Abhishek Verma in a dream run that saw them ousting top seed Netherlands 158-155 in the quarterfinals.

But their run was halted in the semifinals when they lost narrowly to fourth seed USA pair of Kris Schaff and Paige Pearce Gore.

Trailing by a point in first two ends, the Indian pair levelled it 115-all in the third.

But, USA had a perfect finish with four 10s including one X (closest to the centre) to pip India by one point.

India will fight it out against Turkey in the bronze play-off tomorrow.

Receiving a top-nine bye into round two, India had defeated Croatia 156-155 to begin their campaign.

Jyothi, along with Trisha Deb and Muskan Kirar, will fight it out for a gold medal against their opponents from France in the women's compound team summit clash tomorrow.

This is their second final appearance in three months.

The Indian women's team had lost to Chinese Taipei to settle for a silver in the Antalya leg of the World Cup in May.