Golden pair: Ojas Deotale and Jyothi Surekha Vennam win historic gold
Hangzhou, October 4
Ojas Deotale’s youthful energy blended seamlessly with Jyothi Surekha Vennam’s skills, securing India’s maiden gold medal in the compound mixed team event and contributing to their best-ever show in archery at the Asian Games here today.
The 21-year-old reigning world champion Deotale dropped a point but a flawless Jyothi made up for it, shooting all perfect scores from her eight arrows to down the second-seeded South Korean pair So Chaewon and Joo Jaehoon 159-158. With this, the Indian archers are set to win at least four medals, which will better their previous best show at Incheon in 2014 when they bagged a men’s team compound gold, one silver and a bronze.
Playing three back-to-back knockout matches — quarterfinals, semifinals and final — in 140 minutes can be gruelling, but the Indian pair was ice-cool, especially the 27-year-old Jyothi, who excelled in some crucial moments to nail it. That the pair dropped just four points in three matches speaks a lot about their authoritative show. “I’m not surprised by the result,” Deotale said. “We knew that we could do this. It was very close, but we maintained our form, we stayed calm in every situation,” he added.
