BERLIN: His medal also took India’s tally to four in the World Archery Championships 2023. Ojas Pravin Deotale won the third gold medal for India in the Worlds.
Earlier Aditi Gopichand Swami clinched a historic first-ever individual gold medal for India, while the compound women’s team also won gold a day before. Ojas Pravin Deotale has now become the first-ever male archery World Champion from India. He defeated Poland’s Lukasz Przybylski with a perfect score of 150. The Polish archer scored 149.
Earlier, Ojas caused an upset defeating World No. 1 Mike Schloesser of The Netherlands with a score of 149-148 in the semi-finals. Before that he outshot Poland’s Przemyslaw Konecki 148-144 in the quarter-finals.
The 21-year-old Nagpur resident’s historic gold medal also ensured India finished their campaign in the World Archery Championship with their best-ever medal haul of four. India won three gold medals and one bronze with all four coming in the Compound event – which is a non-Olympic event with only archery recurve competitions taking place at the Olympics.
India’s recurve archers failed to make it to the medal rounds, missing out on the Olympic quota places there were on offer in Berlin for Paris Olympics 2024.
So far India has only one World Champion in Palton Hansda who won the junior World title in 2006. Thereafter, Ojas emerged the senior men’s World Champion in Berlin.
In the distaff side, India, of course, have many World Champions in the age group competitions mostly in recurve bow section. Names like Deepika Kumari, Komalika Bari are household names. India are still waiting for an individual or team gold winner in the recurve bow section.
