India takes women's recurve team gold in Okazaki after a judged 9 ends Korea's streak

India won its first Asian Games gold in the women's recurve team event on Friday in Okazaki, beating South Korea 5-3. Ankita Bhakat, Kirti and Kumkum Anil Mohod took the title. Lee Yun-ji, Kang Chae-young and Oh Ye-jin took silver. Korea had won every women's team gold in recurve at the Asian Games since 1998 and was shooting for an eighth straight.

The final was at Okazaki Chuo Sogo Park Multipurpose Square, about 50 kilometres southeast of Nagoya, the main host city of the Aichi-Nagoya Games. In a recurve team match each of the three archers shoots two arrows a set. Six arrows, a maximum of 60 points, and the higher score takes the set. First to five set points wins. India had reached the final by beating China 5-1 in the semi-final. Kirti closed the first and second sets of that semi-final with 10s.

The final turned on one arrow in the fourth set. India had already traded sets with Korea. In the fourth, Mohod's last arrow was a 10. Judges then looked again at Kirti's first arrow of the set, which sat on the line between an 8 and a 9. An 8 would have forced a shoot-off. They called it a 9. India had shot 9, 9 and 10 to close the set. Korea had shot 8, 9 and 9. The set was tied on that reading, and the tie gave India the set point that finished the match at 5-3.

Yonhap's account of the scoring is the one that can be checked against the format. A team set is six arrows. A single ring on one of them is two points, and two points is the difference between a tied set and a lost set. The review was not a protest about equipment or timing. It was a line call on an arrow already in the target, made after Mohod had put in the 10. Had the judges stayed with an 8, the match would have gone to a one-arrow shoot-off, the format Korea has won for a generation.

The streak Yonhap recorded runs from 1998. Some Indian reports described a 44-year hold on the event. The wire account is the tighter one: every gold since 1998, and a failed attempt at an eighth in a row. India's compound teams have won Asian titles for years. The recurve team event is the one Korea has treated as its own, and it is the one that feeds the Olympic team ranking. A gold in Okazaki does not by itself move an Olympic quota. It does end the result that every Indian recurve squad since the late 1990s has been measured against.

Bhakat, Kirti and Mohod did it as a set-play team rather than as three separate scores. The semi-final against China was 5-1, with Kirti's closing 10s taking the first two sets. The final was closer, and it needed the review. The match sheet, once World Archery publishes it, will show whether the fourth-set total was level only after that 9. Until then, the public record is Yonhap's: 9-9-10 against 8-9-9, a tied set, and the gold.

Okazaki is a satellite venue, not the main stadium in Nagoya. The square was built up for the Games as a field range. Friday's final was the round that will be replayed in India because of the line call, and in Korea because an eighth straight gold stopped on it. The archers' names on the Indian side are Ankita Bhakat, Kirti and Kumkum Anil Mohod. The Korean names are Lee Yun-ji, Kang Chae-young and Oh Ye-jin. The score that decided it was a 9.