Paralympics: The pair of Sheetal Devi and Rakesh Kumar won bronze in mixed team archery, India got the 13th medal

The para archery pair of Sheetal Devi and Rakesh Kumar won the bronze medal by defeating the pair of Eleonora Sarti and Matteo Bonacina of Italy 156-155 in the mixed team compound open bronze medal match. This is India's 13th medal in the Paris Paralympics. India has so far won two gold, five silver, and six bronze medals in these games. The pair of Sheetal and Rakesh lost to the pair of Fatima Hemati and Hadi Nori of Iran in the shoot-off in the semi-finals. Only Harvinder Singh had won an archery medal for India in the Paralympics in Tokyo three years ago. Harvinder also brought bronze.

India won when the shot of 17-year-old Sheetal was upgraded after revision. With four arrows remaining, the Indian pair was trailing by one point but eventually played with patience and registered a win.

The Indian pair came close to making it to the finals but had to face defeat after a great comeback by the Iranian team and a revision of the score by a judge. After the score was tied at 152-152, the match went to a shoot-off. It seemed that the Indian pair had won when the Iranian team scored nine on the fourth arrow, and then the judge declared it 10 after review. This led to the shoot-off. Both teams scored perfectly in the shoot-off but Fatima's arrow hit the middle, due to which the Iranian team made it to the finals.

Earlier, Sheetal and Rakesh easily defeated the Indonesian pair of Teodora Audi Ayudia Ferlin and Ken Swegumilang 154-143 in the quarter-finals. In the mixed compound open category, the top-seeded pair of Sheetal and Rakesh showed excellent form during their journey to the semi-finals, which they maintained in the bronze medal match as well.

Sheetal was born in 2007 with a rare congenital disorder called phocomelia which causes her limbs to remain underdeveloped. Due to this disease, her hands could not develop fully. 39-year-old Rakesh had a spinal cord injury and after recovering from it in 2009, he realized that now he would have to remain in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, which led him to depression and he even thought of committing suicide. On Sunday, Rakesh lost the bronze medal match of the men's compound open category to China's He Jihao by one point.