Indian archer Deepika Kumari reaches World Cup semis

Paris, June 23

Indian archer Deepika Kumari stayed in hunt for her second successive gold by moving to the women’s recurve individual semi-finals of the World Cup Stage 3 here on Wednesday.

The world number three, who had won the World Cup Stage 1 in Guatemala City in April this year, overwhelmed 2012 London Olympics silver medalist Aida Roman of Mexico 6-0.

Shrugging off her disastrous show in Sunday’s Final Olympic Qualifier team event, Deepika reigned supreme with scores of 29, 28 and 28 that included four perfect 10s with two closest to the centre (X) to knock out the veteran Mexican.

The second seed Deepika has another Mexican challenger in sixth seed Ana Vazquez.

Rest of the Indians, including World Cup stage one champion Atanu Das, made early exits as the 2010 Commonwealth Games gold medalist remained the only hope in the individual recurve section.

Following her disastrous show in the Final Olympic Qualifier team event, Deepika shot consistently as she began her elimination round by blanking Elena Tonetta of Italy 6-0.

Ankita Bhakat also joined Deepika in the last-16, defeating Angeline Cohendet of France 7-1, while teenager Komalika Bari lost to Ines De Velasco of Spain 4-6.

In the pre-quarters, Deepika bounced back from being 1-3 to defeat Charline Schwarz of Germany in a hard-fought five setter 7-3, while left-handed Ankita made an exit, going down to Russian Elena Osipova 2-6.

In the men’s individual events, Das lost to Jack Willimas of USA 5-6 (8-9) in the shootoff, while Pravin Jadhav lost to Patrick Houston of Great Britain 2-6 in the pre-quarters.

Veteran Army archer Tarundeep Rai made a last-32 exit, losing to Nicholas D’Amour of Virgin Islands in shootoff 5-6 (9-10).

Earlier, Abhishek Verma and Jyothi Surekha Vennam emerged the best placed Indians with their respective 11th and 15th place finishes in the qualification round of men’s and women’s compound sections.

In their first international competition in about two years, the Indian compound archers appeared rusty. The two-time World Cup champion Verma logged 706 points. — PTI