India’s campaign at the World Archery Championships 2025 ended with two medals – a gold and silver – as the recurve contingent failed to make the podium in Gwangju, Republic of Korea, on Friday.
Teenager Gatha Khadake, 15, was the last Indian standing in recurve. Her run ended in the pre-quarterfinals after losing 6-0 against home favourite Lim Si-hyeon, the world No. 1 and triple Olympic champion from Paris 2024.
The loss sealed a third successive World Championships without an Indian recurve medal. The last archery medal in recurve came in 2019 when the men’s team of Tarundeep Rai, Atanu Das and Pravin Jadhav reached the final in Den Bosch.
Four-time Olympian Deepika Kumari, making her sixth appearance at the World Championships, lost 6-4 in the women’s individual recurve archery third round to Indonesia’s Diananda Choirunisa. She had finished sixth in the qualifying round.
Deepika Kumari owns two World Championship medals – both team silvers – from Torino 2011 and Copenhagen 2015. She is yet to win an individual medal at the World Championships.
India’s top-ranked men’s recurve archer, Olympian Dhiraj Bommadevara, also suffered an early exit after placing 39th in qualification and losing to Tokyo 2020 champion Mete Gazoz in the first knockout round.
India’s two medals at the World Archery Championships 2025 came in the compound archery events.
Rishabh Yadav, Aman Saini and Prathamesh Fuge clinched India’s maiden men’s team gold with a 235-233 win over France.
Yadav also joined forces with Jyothi Surekha Vennam to secure silver in the mixed team event – a discipline set to make its Olympic debut at the LA 2028 Olympics. For Jyothi, it was her second mixed team silver at the Worlds after Yankton 2021 with Abhishek Verma.
The World Archery Championships, first held in 1931, have been a biennial event since the 1950s.
Indian archers have now won 17 medals in the competition – four gold, 10 silver and three bronze – with the most successful outing coming in Berlin 2023, where they topped the medal standings with three golds and a bronze.
World Archery Championships 2025: Indian medal winners
- Gold medal – Rishabh Yadav, Aman Saini and Prathamesh Fuge (compound men’s team)
- Silver medal – Rishabh Yadav-Jyothi Surekha Vennam (compound mixed team)