PTI

New Delhi, May 31: Indian archers on Friday created history by winning the gold medal in the men's recurve team event in the World Cup in Antalya, Turkey.

The Indian squad comprising Rahul Banerjee, Jayanta Talukdar and Mangal Singh Champia thwarted a strong challenge from Malaysia to win the title clash 218-215 and bag the team gold for the first time.

In the semifinals, India went past a spirited Chinese Taipei 218-210.

This is the fourth time the Indian archers have won gold at the prestigious event.

In 2006, Talukdar had won an individual gold in Porec, Croatia. In the next year, ace woman archer Dola bagged two gold medals at Dover, England, and at the mega final in Dubai. But this is the first time that the country clinched the gold in a team event.

Ironically despite the feat, the men's team cannot participate in the Beijing Games where only two archers qualified, one berth short for a country to qualify for the team competition.

"It's a great moment of joy, but an unfortunate situation that the loss to Italy by one point in an earlier event cost us the team event berth in Beijing. But today we defeated them," senior coach Sanjeeva Singh said.

Singh also rued the fact one of the best archers of the country, Champia, a member of the team that won gold, has not qualified for the Olympics.