SINGAPORE: India’s junior archers returned with nine medals -- two gold, six silver, and one bronze -- from the Asia Cup Leg 2 here on Friday.
It seemed a successful outing on paper, but a deeper look once again highlighted a troubling trend that has come to define Indian archery at all levels -- faltering when it matters the most.
Despite making seven of the 10 finals across recurve and compound disciplines, Indian archers finished on top of the podium just twice.
The rest of the finals -- five in all -- ended in heartbreak, with the Indians visibly crumbling under pressure.
It wasn’t so much that the losses stood out, but the manner in which the Indian archers lost was more concerning with top seeds going down to lower-ranked opponents, arrows straying to outer rings, and composure evaporating at the slightest of resistance.
As usual, the results were particularly alarming in recurve the Olympic discipline -- where India failed to win a single gold.
In fact, apart from two silver medals in team events, the recurve archers returned empty-handed.
The men’s team, top-seeded after the qualification round, simply fell apart against Japan in the final.
Vishnu Choudhary, Paras Hooda, and Juyel Sarkar failed to touch the 50-mark in two of the three sets, bowing out in straight sets 6-0.