Shanghai: The Indian trio of Tarundeep Rai, Dhiraj Bommadevara and Pravin Jadhav set up a gold medal clash with Olympic champions Korea after storming into the men’s team recurve final of the Archery World Cup Stage 1 here on Thursday.
It came a day after India were assured of at least two medals in the compound competition after both the men’s and women’s teams made the finals. The Indian recurve team, which qualified behind reigning world and Olympic champions South Korea, sailed past Italy 5-1 (55-54, 55-55, 56-55) in the last-four stage.
India will be up against the South Korea’s Tokyo Olympics gold medal-winning trio of Kim Woojin, Lee Woo Seok and Kim Je Deok in the final slated for Sunday.
The top-seeded Korean trio defeated their Chinese Taipei rivals Tan Chih-Chun, Lin Zih-Siang and Tai Yu-Hsuan in straight sets 6-0 (57-50, 58-56, 58-54). In the compound event, former world youth champion Priyansh and reigning Asian Games gold-medallist Jyothi Surekha Vennam advanced to their respective individual semi-finals to also remain in the hunt for a medal. Having got a first round bye in the season-opening tournament, the second-seeded men’s recurve team overcame a first set deficit to beat 15th seeded Indonesia 5-3 (55-56, 54-54, 55-51, 55-53) in their tricky opening clash.
They were back to their best against seventh-seeded Spain as they began by dropping just one point (59 out of 60) before cruising to a 5-1 (59-54, 56-55, 55-55) win to make the semi-finals. The Indian women’s team of Deepika Kumari, Ankita Bhakat and Bhajan Kaur, which got the sixth rank in the qualifiers, managed a below-par show and lost a 3-1 lead to go down to Mexico in its opening clash.