India women’s compound team enters final; men exit in quarters of Stage 4 Archery World Cup

Madrid: India were assured of at least one medal at Stage 4 of the Archery World Cup after the compound women’s team stormed into the final, even as the men’s team bowed out in the quarterfinals here on Wednesday.

The top-seeded women’s trio of Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Parneet Kaur and the 16-year-old debutant Prithika produced a dominant show, beating Indonesia 230-226 in the semifinals.

Earlier, they eased past El Salvador 235-226 in the quarterfinals. They will face the 10th seeds Chinese Taipei for the gold medal on Saturday.

However, the men’s compound team -- Rishabh Yadav, Prathamesh Fuge and Aman Saini -- fell short by a single point, losing 233-234 to Mexico in a hard-fought quarterfinal.

The Indians, who had topped qualification, started strongly but slipped behind in the second end and could not recover despite a tense finish.

On Tuesday, Rishabh and Jyothi had underlined India’s supremacy by topping the individual qualification rounds in men’s and women’s sections respectively, besides combining to break the mixed team world record with a score of 1431 -- surpassing the previous mark of 1429 set by Denmark at the 2023 European Games.

Yadav’s 716 in men’s qualifying was a new personal best and just two points short of the individual world record.

The reigning Asian Games champion Jyothi too shot a personal best of 715 to secure the top seed in the women’s section.