Indian archers bag two gold medals and one silver at Asian Grand Prix

Gagandeep Kaur

Indian archers bagged two gold medals in the ongoing Asian Grand Prix Archery Championship at Bangkok today, while also taking home a silver. India’s compound team of Gagandeep Kaur, V Jyothi Surekha and P Lily Chanu bagged the first gold medal for Indian women in the tournament, beating Iran in the final of the team event with a big margin of 15 points (219 vs 204).

The Indians had eliminated the Taipei team (224 vs 220) in the semifinals, after beating the Lao team in the quarter-finals (224 vs 214).

The second gold medal today was clinched by the men’s recurve team of Jayanta Talukdarm, Tarundeep Rai and Kapil. The thrashed Taipei in a one-sided final, which was decided on the set system, 6-0. En route to the final, the Indians had conquered Japan and Malaysia in the semifinals and quarterfinals respectively.

However, the Indian trio of Abhishek Verma, Sandeep Kumar and Rajat Chouhan missed out on the gold and had to settle for silver in the compound men’s event. The trio lost the gold to Iran in a narrow defeat (227 vs 232) in the finals.

Meanwhile, the recurve women team lost in the bronze medal match against Japan.

V K Malhotra, the president of the Archery Association of India, praised the players following their impressive performance in the Asian Grand Prix.

“We are proud of our archers’ performance in the first event of calendar year. The way they performed in the Asian Grand Prix gives us hope that they will earn good number of medals in other international competitions lined up this year and most importantly, Incheon Asian Games 2014 which is just six months away,” he said.

Two of the three members of the gold medal-winning men’s recurve team are supported by Olympic Gold Quest, who posted the following congratulatory post on their Facebook page after their victory:

Post by Olympic Gold Quest.