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Abhishek Verma won the gold medal in the compound men's individual event at the Archery World Cup 2023 Stage 3 in Medellin, Colombia on Saturday.
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After failing as a team in the bronze play-off on the first day, the world number 18 produced his best performance in the individual final. He extended his lead to finish 148-146 against the 2019 world champion James Lutz of the USA. Verma, a multiple-time World Cup gold medallist, was making a comeback after missing the first two stages of the Archery World Cup 2023.
Abhishek Verma had earlier defeated world number one and top seed Mike Schloesser of the Netherlands in a thrilling individual final to reach the semi-finals. Eighth seed Verma then entered the final after defeating Brazil's Luccas Abreu in a last-four encounter. This is Verma's third individual World Cup gold medal.
This is his first gold since the 2021 Paris stage. He won his first individual gold medal in 2015 in Wroclaw, Poland. Verma has also won two silver and one bronze medal in the individual category of the World Cup. Abhishek Verma will now join Prathamesh Jawkar at September's finals in Mexico. The Indian team has so far won one gold and three bronze medals in the ongoing Archery World Cup 2023 tournament.
Meanwhile, the recurve mixed team will also challenge for the bronze medal. The team defeated France and the Netherlands by identical 6–0 margins to make it to the semi-finals. While they lost 3–5 to Korea. The team will take on Chinese Taipei for the bronze medal. While the men's recurve team of Dhiraj Bommadevara, Mrinal Chauhan, and Tushar Shelke clinched a bronze medal on Thursday.
The Archery World Cup 2023 stage 3 will conclude on Monday with individual recurve archery men's and women's finals. No Indian recurve archer made it past the quarter-final stage.