Deepika Kumari Wins Individual Recurve Gold at Salt Lake World Cup

INDIA’s ace Archer Deepika Kumari, 24, has won her first individual gold medal in six years at the Salt Lake City (USA) World Cup defeating Germany’s Michelle Kroppen in the recurve final. The gold has ensured her berth at the season-ending Archery World Cup Final in Samsun, Turkey in October. In six appearances at the Archery World Cup, Deepika had come back with silver medals in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015 but this time she finally got the most coveted prize .The last time she won a stage medal was back in 2015 but the last time she won at a stage event on the international circuit goes even further back to Antalya in 2012.Indoor world team champion Kroppen will be the highest ranked German recurve archer following the tournament. She represents India in recurve archery and is ranked 12th as per the latest World Archery Rankings. There are two forms of competitive archery. One being recurved and the other is Compound. Recurve comes from the shape of the bow’s frame. The tips of a recurve bow curve out towards the target giving the bow more power when pulled back.

Making her first individual event final, Kroppen had her task cut out from the get go as she was aware she was averaging 9.08 points per arrow compared to Deepika’s 9.21 points per arrow.In the final, Deepika started off better by taking the opening set 29-28 and taking a 2-0 set lead. Both shot 10, 9 and 9 in the second set to stand level at 28-28 which brought the match down to 3-1. Kroppen won the third set 27-26 and levelled the match at 3-3. Deepika showed her experience in the final two sets as the pressure started to kick in. Kroppen shot a 7 on her third arrow to hand the fourth set (29-26) to the Indian archer. With all to do in the final set, Kroppen scored 8 points on her third arrow and Deepika won the fifth set 27-26 and with that, the match.“I was repeating to myself, ‘just do it the best, this is your time; just enjoy your game and forget about winning or losing and have fun’,” said Deepika. “Do I feel relieved to qualify? Yes and no. I’m not expecting anything, at the moment I’m just enjoying my game, I want to enjoy my game,” she added. Earlier on Saturday, Abhishek Verma had won an individual silver in the Compound category and was part of the mixed team bronze winning side with  Jyothi Surekha Vennam. But in the recurve mixed team bronze medal match, Kumari and Atanu Das came second best to Chinese Taipei to lose narrowly by 5-4 margin, reports  DD Sports . The Archer from Jharkhand is considered an inspiration for Indian Archers. She has brought India multiple laurels from archery world. Born to Shivnarayan Mahato, an auto-rickshaw driver and Geeta Mahato, a nurse at Ranchi Medical College, Deepika Kumari has been encouraged by her parents to become an achiever in archery despite their poverty Living 15 km away from Ranchi with her parents, in Ratu Chati village, as a child, when she had no means of practicing with the proper equipment. Hence, she she had trained with mangoes as her target and with stones instead of a bow and arrows.