Archery
World Archery C'ships 2023: Women's compound team wins first ever gold for India
The compound archery team of Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Aditi Swami and Parneet Kaur beat Mexico as India beame world champions in any category of archery for the first time in history.

FILE PHOTO: Aditi Swami, Parneet Kaur and Jyothi Surekha Vennam (from left to right) won India's first ever gold medal at World Archery Championships. (World Archery)
The women's compound archery team of Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Aditi Swami and Parneet Kaur won India's first ever gold medal at the World Archery Championships (WAC) in Berlin on Friday.
The women's team beat Mexico 235-229 in the final. Earlier, they had knocked out defending champions Colombia in the semifinal.
India have become world champions in any category of archery for the first time with this historic win.
In the 92 years since the start of the WAC, India had won 11 medals - 9 silver and 2 bronze - but no gold medals before this.
"This feels wonderful because this was the first gold medal for the country. Hope there are more medals in archery in future," Jyothi Surekha Vennam, the most experienced archer in the team, said after the gold medal.
This gold medal was her 7th medal at the WAC overall, but the first gold.
All three women archers - Jyothi, Parneet Kaur and Aditi Gopichand Swami - have also made it to the quarters of the individual rounds to keep medal hopes alive. The individual knockout matches will take place over Saturday and Sunday.
India's historic success in compound archery comes after disappointment in the recurve archery section, where neither the teams nor any of the individual archers managed to secure Olympic quotas.
List of Indian medallists at World Archery Championships
2005 recurve men team silver, Tarundeep Rai, Gautam Singh, Jayanta Talukdar
2011 recurve women team silver, Deepika Kumari, Laishram Bombayla Devi, Chekrovolu Swuro
2015 recurve women team silver, Rimil Buriuly, Deepika Kumari, Laxmirani Majhi
2015 compound men silver, Rajat Chauhan
2017 compound women team silver, Trisha Deb, Lily Chanu Paonam, Jyothi Surekha Vennam
2019 recurve men team silver, Atanu Das, Pravin Ramesh Jadhav, Tarundeep Rai
2019 compound women bronze, Jyothi Surekha Vennam
2019 compound women team bronze, Raj Kaur, Muskan Kirar, Jyothi Surekha Vennam
2021 compound women silver, Jyothi Surekha Vennam
2021 compound women team silver, Priya Gurjar, Muskan Kirar, Jyothi Surekha Vennam
2021 compound mixed team silver, Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Abhishek Verma
2023 compound women team gold, Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Aditi Swami and Parneet Kaur