The Indian compound mixed team remained made it to the bronze medal contest, while recurve archer Jayanta Talukdar narrowly missed out on reaching the men’s individual semifinals in the Archery World Cup Stage-2 on Friday.
The sixth-seeded Indian compound pair of Avneet Kaur and Abhishek Verma received a first round bye and beat Denmark 157-155 and Mexico 156-153 before losing to Estonia 158-156 in the semifinals.
Avneet and Abhishek will take on Turkey in the bronze medal match on Saturday.
The seventh-ranked Indian recurve mixed team of Ridhi Phor and Tarundeep Rai got a bye and defeated Japan — comprising triple Olympics medallist Takaharu Furukawa and his partner Utano Agu — 5-3 (33-38, 36-36, 38-32, 38-36) before going down against Germany — consisting of Katharina Bauer and Felix Wieser — 5-1 (37-37, 32-35, 36-37) in the quarterfinals.
The 39th-placed Talukdar, who led 5-0 at one stage, nearly pulled off a second upset before going down 6-5 (29-26, 29-27, 28-28, 26-29, 26-27, S.O. 10-X) to double Olympics and multiple World champion gold winner and second-seeded Korean Woojin Kim — who saw off Tarundeep Rai 6-2 in the pre-quarterfinals — in the recurve men’s individual quarterfinals.
Earlier, Talukdar stunned current Olympic Games individual champion Mete Gazoz of Turkey 6-0, Felix Weiser of Germany 6-4 and Eric Peters of Canada 6-2.
Sachin Gupta exited in the second round, while Neeraj Chauhan fell in the first round.
In recurve women individual competitions, Ridhi, placed 14th in the rankings, went past Poland’s Kamila Naploszek 6-0 and Mexico’s Olympics bronze medallist Alejandra Valencia 6-2. She found a roadblock in third-ranked Korean Gahyun Lee and lost 6-5 (shoot-off 9-8) in the pre-quarterfinals.
Ankita Bhakat was ousted in the second round, while Komalika Bari and Simranjeet Kaur were beaten in the first round.
