Deepika Kumari bags sixth Archery World Cup medal with silver in Mexico

Indian archer Deepika Kumari captured her sixth World Cup medal on Sunday, winning silver after a 0-6 defeat to China’s Li Jiaman in the championship round.

The 2010 Commonwealth Games champion delivered an outstanding performance in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, defeating Li’s teammate Yang Xiaolei 6-0 and then overcoming eventual bronze medallist Alejandra Valencia 6-4 in a close contest on her home turf.

“It’s an honour to be part of this World Cup, to win a medal in this World Cup. Now, I’m going to work even harder after that,” Deepika said in the post-match presentation.

Li won the finale of archery’s premier international circuit on her first attempt which features eight of the best archers from each event (compound and recurve) per gender who qualify either from winning one of three World Cup stages in the year or their world ranking.

“The first match was relatively tense and the last two felt like a little bit more of a challenge,” said Li on her differences in between matches. “I was still doing my best but I wasn’t as nervous as I was in the first match.

“I was just trying to get the best arrows out. I wasn’t thinking too much about winning or losing.”

The five-member Indian team, comprising three compound archers and two recurve archers, wrapped up their campaign at the season-ending tournament with one medal.