Parth Salunkhe first Indian male recurve archer to medal at World Youth Championships

In what has been a brilliant start to the week for Indian sports, Parth Salunkhe breached the Korean barrier to be crowned U21 world champion in Men's Individual Recurve at the World Archery Youth Championships in Limerick, Ireland on Sunday night. This win came hours before Lakshya Sen beat his Chinese opponent in the Canada Open final.

Salunkhe won the gold medal by beating Song Injun of Korea 6-4.

Parth Salunkhe is the sixth Indian archer after Palton Hansda (2006), Deepika Kumari (2009, 2011), Komalika Bari (2019, 2021), Aditi Swami (2023) and Priyansh (2023) to win an individual medal in the history of the World Archery Youth Championships. Among these names, only Deepika Kumari and Komalika Bari are recurve archers.

In other events, Bhajan Kaur won a bronze medal in Women's U21 Individual Recurve, beating Hsin-Yu Su of Taipei 7-1.

Indian archers finished second in the medal tally behind South Korea with a total of 11 medals - 6 gold, 1 silver and 4 bronze. Korea had a total of 10 medals - 6 gold and 4 silver.

This was the most successful edition of the World Youth Championships for Indian archers. India had won 14 gold medals over the previous 17 editions, this time there were six gold medals in one go.