Asian Para Archery Championships 2023: Rakesh Kumar completes golden hat-trick in compound

Sheetal Devi clinched two gold and a silver medal.

The Indian archery contingent had an extraordinary penultimate day bagging four gold medals at the Asian Para Archery Championships 2023. Off all the archers, Rakesh Kumar stood out by bagging three gold medals in the compound event. He started the day by combining with Suraj Singh to defeat Chinese Taipei’s Chung-Hung Wu/Chih Chiang (147-144) in the gold medal playoffs.

Further, in a span of few minutes Rakesh and world archery championships silver medallist, Sheetal Devi, won silver by getting the better of Ferelly-Swagumilang (154-149). The duo has experienced good partnership this season having earlier finished on top at Asian Games 2023. In the finals today, the duo led from the opening series and never let the Indonesians come back in the four series played.

To sum up the day, Rakesh Kumar won his third gold medal by defeating Swagumilang (145-144) in a crunch encounter. The Indian did not have a good start trailed in the first three series. However, things turned upside down when Swagumilang shot an eight in his penultimate shot. Rakesh Kumar took control and shot a perfect 10 to create history in men’s compound open archery event.

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He was trailing for majority of the encounter but one single poor shot from the Indonesian worked in favour of the Indian. Earlier in the day, Asian Games medallist Sheetal Devi settled for silver in women’s compound open event. She took on Singapore’s Nur Alim in the final battle. The match finished with an even scoreline (142-142) at the end of regulation time.

The shootoff once again was evenly poised as both archers shot 10 each but the Singaporean shot the arrow closer to the inner circle leading to a top spot finish. Earlier in the day, Sheetal and Jyoti combined to finish on top by defeating South Korea (148-137) in women’s compound open event.

The match was evenly poised till the mid-way stage with the scores tied 72 all. South Korean’s lost complete control and could only manage 33 and 32 in the next two series respectively resulting in their loss.

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