Dhiraj eyes WC final medal ahead of Asian Games

India’s top-ranked recurve archer Dhiraj Bommadevara, the lone from the country to make the cut for the season-ending World Cup Final this year, will be eyeing a maiden medal at the coveted event when he starts out against Turkey’s Berkim Tumer, here on Sunday.

The one-day competition follows a straightforward knockout format beginning with the quarterfinals, meaning two wins will be enough for an archer to assure himself of a medal.

Dhiraj qualified for the elite eight-member field by virtue of his victory at the World Cup Stage 3 in Antalya. No other Indian archer has made the cut across the recurve and compound sections in the men’s and women’s categories.

As for the draw, it is a relatively favourable one for the 25-year-old Army man, who opens against Tumer, an archer he defeated in the pre-quarterfinals during his last World Cup appearance in Madrid in July, before bowing out in the last eight.

Should he clear the opening hurdle, the Vijayawada archer is likely to run into American great Brady Ellison in the semifinals. Ellison, a multiple world champion and two-time Olympic medallist, will be in Mexico to defend his recurve men’s title after winning his sixth World Cup Final trophy in Nanjing in 2025. But Dhiraj has already shown that he can beat the American great, having defeated Ellison in the pre-quarterfinals of the 2023 World Cup in Antalya, a victory that helped him secure his maiden World Cup medal — a bronze.

Since then, Dhiraj has added two more bronze medals and a gold to his World Cup tally.

The Saltillo final will also serve as an important final competition for Dhiraj ahead of the Asian Games in Japan next week, with the Indian set to fly directly to Aichi-Nagoya after the World Cup.