Star archery duo Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari lost their bronze medal matches each as India made a poor comeback from the World Cup final here empty handed. In the absence of the Indian recurve coach, the couple faced cold and cloudy weather here on Friday. Das suffered a one-sided bronze playoff loss 6-0 (27-29, 26-27, 28-30) to defending Olympic champions Mete Gazoz of Turkey. He doubled up as Deepika’s coach when the world number two lost in a shoot-off to Olympic team bronze medalist Michelle Kroppen. World number two Deepika hit her six in the eighth WCF and lost 5-6 (6-9) in the shoot-off.
Returning to action after more than two months of a quarterfinal exit at the Tokyo Games, a perfect set of 30 knocked out the three-time Indian Olympian as her German rival cruised to a 4-0 lead. increased starting pressure. Mitchell drilled in perfect scores in the first two sets (30-28, 30-29), while the third was a tie with both archers shooting 28-alls.
The world number 14 began to waver in the fourth set, falling into the red circle (8), as Deepika seized her chance to win the set by one point (28-27). Down 3-5, Deepika collected another 28 in the make-or-break fifth set to force a shoot-off.
But in the shoot-off, Deepika stumbled in shooting wide in the blue ring. Deepika, who won four silver and bronze medals in the tournament, started with a 6-4 victory over Olympic team silver medalist Svetlana Gomboeva of Russia in the quarterfinals.
In the semi-finals, she lost 6–2 to Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Elena Osipova of Russia. Das began his campaign with a 6–2 win over Germany’s Maximilian Wechmueller, only to go down 2–6 to world number one Brady Ellison of the United States.
According to sources, Deepika’s childhood coach B Srinivasa Rao was supposed to join the duo in Yankton, but the plan went shelved at the last minute. “We had Lokesh Chand as the compound coach and Rao was supposed to go there, but the plan was changed at the last minute,” an official said.
Earlier on Thursday, ace archer Abhishek Verma failed to add to his three World Cup final medals, crashing out of the first round after losing to eventual silver medalist Braden Galanthian of the United States.
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