India captured its first individual men’s recurve archery medal in 16 years as Neeraj Chauhan won the bronze medal at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games on Saturday. In the all-India bronze clash between two of the country’s silver-winning team members from a couple of days ago, Chauhan came out on top against his higher-seeded and more experienced compatriot Dhiraj Bommadevara 6-4.
Both, however, had below-par semi-finals. More so, Dhiraj, who lost to Korean Lee Wooseok 7-3. So was the third, after both archers produced a high-quality, perfect 30 score. So was the fourth (29-29), where Lee could have wrapped things up with a perfect shot but missed it by one. The Olympic medallist was not missing anything in the final set (30-27), and confined Dhiraj to the bronze medal contest.
With both Dhiraj and Chauhan coming off straightforward quarter-final wins, the semi-final bracket—with only one Korean left—appeared ripe for a bigger Indian push. Especially since Dhiraj was India’s most in-form archer as the World Cup Finals champion, and Chauhan had stunned South Korea’s three-time Olympic medallist Kim Jedeok in the elimination rounds. Also confined to it was Chauhan, who was not at his best on the day.
Junya Nakanishi brought out the early 10s in the semi-final, while Chauhan found it a touch late as the first set went to the Japanese (29-28). Both archers littered 8s before Nakanishi hit 10 in time to take the second set too (28-27). Chauhan finally got on board with a tied third set (29-29). But while Nakanishi remained solid, Chauhan continued to stutter as the former took the fourth set 29-26 and the match 7-1.
The bronze also ensured India had podium finishes across all five recurve events in Aichi-Nagoya, making it the country’s best performance in the traditional Olympic discipline at the Asian Games by far. The women’s gold, and champion Kumkum Mohod in particular, stole the show, while the men’s team (silver), the Kumkum-Dhiraj mixed pair (silver) and Chauhan (bronze) all played their part in the big uptick from Hangzhou’s two-medal returns three years ago.
