Till three years ago, 32-year-old Isiah Rajendra Sanam did not know he would be an archer and become the first Indian man to win an Asian Championship gold medal. He was chasing a career in flying but archery caught his fancy once he came back from the United States after completing his studies there.

Sanam won gold at the recently concluded 16th Asian Archery Championships compound bow section in Bali, Indonesia, defeating local talent Nyoman Puruhito. This was India's second individual gold in the history of the competition; the earlier was won by Jhano Hansda in women's compound bow section in New Delhi four years ago.

Sanam took to competitive archery after seeing the facilities at the Andhra Sports School in Hyderabad.

Indian archers have finished at the top place in the 4th Asian Grand Prix archery meet with bagging seven gold, one silver and three bronze medals on the final day at the SAI, Eastern Centre, on Saturday.

Indian archers dominated on the last day as they made clean sweep in the team championship event with winning all four gold medals. India archers also bagged gold medals in the men’s and women’s compound events. Later in the day, Indian women won gold medal in the women’s recurve event.

The campaign of Indian archers has come to an end after Indian men's' recurve team went down to China 216-221 in the quarterfinal of the 45th World Archery Championship at Ulsan, South Korea on Monday.

The third seeded Indian men's team including Rahul Banerjee, Mangal Singh Champia and Jayanta Talukdar defeated 11th ranked Malaysia 217-207 in the pre-quarterfinal earlier in the day.

However, they failed to overcome the challenge of the sixth-seeded team of China later in the day and Indian team will have to return home without winning any medal.

Berlin  - Two-time reigning champion Allyson Felix leads the way as the United States starts its sprint comeback effort against Jamaica on Friday in the women's 200 metres at the world championships.

Jamaica was expected to take a 3-0 lead into the race unless Usain Bolt was to befall some unforeseeable disaster in the men's 200m later Thursday.

Bolt won the 100m in stunning world record of 9.58 seconds on Sunday and Shelly-Ann Fraser the women's dash the next day.

Indian men's recurve team including Jayanta Talukdar, Rahul Banerjee and Mangal Singh Champia finished at the third place in the Archery World Cup Stage IV in Shanghai, China today.

Jayanta Talukdar was the best performer for India, who finished at the 10th spot with a total of 1324 points in the FITA qualification round. Banerjee stood at 18th position with a total of 1313 points while Champia scored 1304 points to be at 24th place.

New Delhi, Nov 26 : Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Monday congratulated Dola Banerjee for winning the Gold Medal in the women's individual recurve competition at the Archery World Cup.

In his message to Banerjee, Dr. Singh said that she has done the nation proud and has become an inspiration for the upcoming archers.

"I wish her the very best in all her future endeavours," he added.

On Saturday, Banerjee created history by becoming the first Indian archer to win a gold medal at the archery World Cup final held in Dubai by defeating Eun Young Choi of Korea 110-109 in a closely fought final. (ANI)