Deepika leads India’s gold rush
Paris, June 27: Star archer Deepika Kumari led the show with supreme authority to grab a hattrick of gold medals as India made an unprecedented clean sweep at the World Cup Stage 3 here on Sunday for a perfect buildup to the Tokyo Olympics in less than a month’s time.
In the absence of the world number one Korea, the Indians faced little challenge to win the women’s individual, team and mixed pair events with Deepika a constant in each of them, playing back-toback four matches in less than five hours.
Having secured Olympic qualifications, Korea, along with other Asian heavyweights like China and Chinese Taipei, skipped all the World Cups in the build up to the Tokyo Games.
India topped the medals tally with four gold medals as Abhishek Verma had clinched the solitary top medal in the compound section on Saturday.
India’s gold rush began with the women’s recurve team of Deepika, Ankita Bhakat and Komalika Bari notching up a comfortable win over Mexico, shrugging off the disappointment of missing Olympic qualification last week.
In a repeat of the World Cup first stage final where they struggled to clinch the gold, the trio this time did not even drop a set to win their second world title in two months.
Eyeing their first-ever gold medal together, Deepika and husband Atanu Das, who are India’s best medal hope in archery in the Olympics, bounced back from a 0-2 deficit to down the Netherland’s Sjef van den Berg and Gabriela Schloesser 5-3.
That was the only time India faced some challenge on the final day here as they displayed fine composure to reign supreme.
Deepika blanked 17th ranked Russian Elena Osipova 6-0 to cap a perfect three out of three in the recurve women’s section, her fourth individual World Cup gold medal.