Nasrin leads archers’ gold hunt

Led by Nasrin Akter Bangladesh stormed to three gold medals in archery's Asia Cup World Ranking Tournament, Stage-1, in Phuket yesterday.

Nasrin was involved in all three gold medal wins as Bangladesh won the top prizes in recurve mixed team event, recurve women's team event and recurve women's individual event.

The first gold came in the mixed team event when Nasrin, pairing up with the country's best male archer Roman Sana, beat their Indian counterparts – Ridhi Salunkhe and Parth Sushant -- in 5-3 sets in the gold-medal match.

Minutes later, Nasrin grabbed her second gold medal of the event, this time pairing up with Diya Siddique and Fahmida Sultana Nisha in the recurve women's team event. This time too, the opposition were India. Bangladesh won the match in 5-4 sets.

The last one was recurve women's individual event, where Nasrin was up against Diya, who had participated in the Tokyo Olympics last year. However, Diya failed to put up much of a resistance as Nasrin swept to the gold medal with a 6-2 sets victory.

Even though Bangladeshi women excelled expectations in this competition, there was a bit of disappointment in the men's draw as Bangladesh lost three bronze medal matches.

Men's recurve team lost against Malaysia; Hakim Ahmed Rubel lost against his Kazakh opponent in recurve individual match while men's compound team lost against Iran – all in the bronze-deciding matches.

However, the three gold and one silver medal were enough to see Bangladesh go top of the medals tally of the six-nation event, which concluded yesterday.