Yecheon (South Korea): Deepika Kumari continued her stellar run in the Archery World Cup on Friday entering the semi-final of the tournament by inking a victory against Berra Elif Gokkir of Turkey.
She is the only recurve archer from India to compete at the finals venue. The 29-year-old secured fourth seed in the elimination round earlier this week. The archer faced an early scare in her first-round fixture against Tinkara Kardinar of Slovenia as the contest was pushed to the shoot-off. She narrowly won the contest with a 9-ring arrow against Tinkara’s 8-ring in the shoot-off.
In the match against the Turkish opponent, Deepika showed immaculate accuracy in the first with three scores of 9. The second set ended in a tie with both the archers scoring 27 from it. The Indian archer then won the third set with a narrow margin but her opponent hinted at a comeback with a win in the fourth set. The fifth and final set of the match ended in a tie and so her Turkish rival failed to bounce back in the contest.
Meanwhile, another Indian archer Ankita Bhakat had a heartbreaking exit in the round of 32 losing 4-6 to Elia Canales of Spain despite leading the match 4-0 after the first two ends of the encounter.
In the men’s recurve category, the Indian archers suffered a disappointing campaign as none were able to advance past the second round. Both Dhiraj Boomadevara and Pravin Jadhav also lost their respective second-round matches.
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