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Former world number one archer Deepika Kumari will make her return to the international stage following a lengthy hiatus at the Asia Cup 2024 stage one archery world ranking tournament starting from Tuesday onwards.
Olympian Tarundeep Rai and women's compound champion Aditi Swami Gopichand will be among 16 archers, eight men and eight women competing at the continental event, as per Olympics.com. Deepika, who is a three-time Olympian and two-time world championships medalist, took a maternity break from the sport and gave birth to a girl in December 2022. Before this, her previous international level outing was the Archery World Cup stage 3 in Paris in June 2022. After she became a mother, Deepika secured a gold medal in the National Games held last year and also topped the charts in national selection trials in Kolkata just last month. In the men's recurve archery, Tarundeep and Dhiraj Bommadevara will be in action. Dhiraj has secured India's only Paris Olympics 2024 quota in archery. The Indian compound archery team will be spearheaded by Aditi, who became the youngest archer to win an individual event at the senior world championships last year at the age of 17. Parneet Kaur, who is an Asian Games gold medalist in the team event will also be played. Ojas Pravin Deotale, who secured a gold medal in the men's compound event during last year's world championships is not in the team. Around 106 archers across 16 countries will be featured at the Baghdad meet, concluding on February 25. -Asia Cup 2024 Baghdad: India archery team Recurve men: Dhiraj Bommadevara, Pravin Jadhav, Tarundeep Rai, Parth Salunkhe Recurve women: Bhajan Kaur, Ankita Bhakat, Simranjeet Kaur, Deepika Kumari Compound men: Kushal Dalal, Prathamesh Jawkar, Piyush Joshi, Priyansh Compound women: Sakshi Chaudhary, Priya Gurjar, Parneet Kaur, Aditi Swami -Archery Asia Cup 2024 Baghdad schedule February 20, Tuesday: Official practiceFebruary 21, Wednesday: Qualification round (recurve and compound)February 22, Thursday: Individual/team/mixed eliminations (recurve and compound)February 23, Friday: Individual eliminations till semi-finals (recurve and compound)March 19, Sunday: Finals (recurve and compound)February 24, Saturday: Finals (compound individual and team)February 25, Sunday: Finals (recurve individual and team). (ANI)
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