Alison Williamson won England’s first medal of the day, a silver in the women’s individual recurve competition, adding to the team silver she won on Friday and taking the total number of medals won by England’s archers to seven.

On what she later described as “by far the windiest day of the competition”, the 39-year-old came through the quarter and semi-finals before losing to India’s Deepika Kumari in the final.

“To be honest, I’m still pretty happy,” she said, clearly delighted with two medals from her first Commonwealth Games. “I can be proud of my silver medal. Deepika shot really well in the final. She was worthy of the gold so I can have no complaints.”

Deepika, a member of the India team that took team recurve gold ahead of England, shot superbly in the final, scoring ten with four of her 12 arrows and nine with another five.

Five times Olympian Williamson comfortably came through her earlier quarter-final against Canadian Kateri Vrakking before facing a stiffer test in Dola Banerjee in semi-final.

The Indian had beaten Williamson’s English team-mate Amy Oliver 7-1 in the quarter-finals but the home favourite’s run stopped with Williamson, who recovered from losing the first set to take the next three, finishing on a ten to secure passage to the gold medal match.

Spurred to victory by a supportive home crowd, 16-year-old Deepika simply had too much in her quiver for Williamson and afterwards the silver medallist paid tribute to the crowd, whom she said added to the atmosphere.

“To be fair to the crowd it’s been a steep learning curve this week. They were very respectful. Once the guys had shot their arrows, then they made loads of noise – it all adds to the atmosphere." 

Of the conditions, Williamson added: “It’s by far the windiest day of the competition which means you have to aim a lot to the left, but sometimes it can trick you because the flags are blowing like crazy but there’s not much wind at ground level.”

Amy Oliver said she was disappointed to lose her quarter-final but had learnt a lot from her Commonwealth Games debut.

"It was very difficult to shoot. I wanted to be in the final but I can do nothing. There has been a lot to learn. We [the England team] all came together and we will be together again in future.”

English bowmen Larry Godfrey and Simon Terry will be aiming for medals in the men’s individual recurve competition this afternoon.