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Verma, playing the semi-finals of the men's individual compound event at the Archery World Cup in Poland, edged past opponent Michele Nencioni of Italy, beating him 147-143. He then followed this up with a victory over archer Steve Anderson of the U.S.A, narrowly managing victory with a 146-145 win over the American.
The Indian archer was initially down a point to Anderson after each was 9 arrows down, but came back with a bang as he shot 3 10-pointers in a row to wrest the lead back from the American. At 116 to Anderson’s 115, both archers scored 30 points in their last three shots, so Verma’s one-point lead proved to be instrumental in his win at Szczytnicki Park in Poland, the venue of the World Cup.
Apart from Verma, however, none of the Indian archers at the tournament had much of an impact.
Among the men, Rahul Banerjee, Mangal Singh Champia, Jayanta Talukdar and Bulbul Marandi were all participating in the men’s individual recurve category. Not one of them even made it into the quarter finals of the event, however.
The women’s individual recurve participants did not fare much better either. Among the participants were Deepika Kumari, Bombayla Devi, Laxmirani Majhi and Rimil Buriuly. Each of them crashed out of the tournament in their first few rounds of play, however.
19-year-old Jyoti Surekha Vennam, an Olympic round gold medallist at 13 and a multiple silver and bronze medal winner at the 2011 World Archery Championships, narrowly missed out on victory. Participating in the compound women's individual event, the teenager made it to the quarterfinals, losing out to Crystal Gauvin of the U.S.A 140-147.
Abhishek Verma will play the individual compound event this Friday in Wroclaw, Poland against Iranian archer Esmail Ebadi. He will be up for a tough battle, as Ebadi won gold at the 2014 Asian Games in the individual category and more recently, another gold in the team event at the 2015 World Archery Championships in Copenhagen, Denmark.
