India's Aditi Gopichand sets new U-18 compound World Record in Archery

The young archer was close to smashing the senior World Record as well.

India's Aditi Gopichand Swamy created a new U-18 world record in the women’s compound qualification round at the Archery World Cup 2023 Stage 3 in Medellin on June 13 (Tuesday). Aditi scored 711 points out of 720 to surpass the previous world record set by Liko Arreola (705 points) of the USA earlier this May in the qualifying rounds.

The 16-year-old was also just two points short of breaking the senior world record (713) set by Colombia's Sara Lopez.

“I feel amazing and I am very happy,” Aditi was quoted as saying by World Archery. “I didn’t expect that I was going to shoot like that and that score, but now I’m very happy with that score because I’m only 16 years old.”

Other Indians in the fray too performed well with Jyothi Surekha Vennam scoring 708 points (2nd), Parneet Kaur - 700 points (6th), and Avneet Kaur - 684 (28th). In the men's compound section, comeback archer and former world champion Abhishek Verma finished eighth by scoring 707 points and is the top-placed Indian in the qualifiers.

Abhishek is making a comeback after missing the previous two editions. He performed well in the second stage of the Archery Asia Cup which enabled him to take part in Archery World Cup Stage 3. Youngster Ojas Pravin Deotale scored 703 points and secured the 13th spot and was closely followed by Prathamesh Samadhan Jawkar, who finished 19th with 702 points. Rajat Chauhan was the last-placed Indian at 28th spot scoring 698.

The women's compound archery team (Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Aditi Gopichand Swami and Parneet Kaur) will get the top seed after scoring a cumulative 2119 points and the men's team (Abhishek Verma, Ojas Pravin Deotale and Samadhan Jawkar) will be allotted the second seed with 2112 points. The women's compound archery team missed out on getting to the world record mark set by South Korea (2120) at the Archery Asia Cup Stage 3 in Singapore. Aditi and Abhishek Verma will be combining together in the mixed team event.