At Nagoya, promises kept, a winning arc - The Indian Express

Since 2003, India has quietly gone about honing skills in Compound Archery, an event ignored by most sports powerhouses because it was not on the Olympics programme. Recurve archery Olympian Sanjeeva Kumar Singh was smitten by the un-complex bow, which is easier on the shoulders and sighting, and brought it to India 23 years ago. On  a bright Nagoya morning, archers Chikitha Taniparthi and Sahil Rajesh Jadhav beat Koreans Choi Eun-gyu and Jung Yoon-park to clinch a gold medal in the mixed team event, giving India its first Los Angeles Olympic quota from the Asian Games. It was a vindication of India’s persistence in sticking to a non-Olympic event, and training at elite levels.

The next two years will see several domestic talents, including multiple world champion Jyothi Surekha Vennam and last edition winner Aditi Swami, besides players from Punjab, Maharashtra and Telangana, readying to clear the trials that will send India to LA 2028. India boasts tremendous young talent in the men’s team, following in the footsteps of pioneer Abhishek Verma. But for now, the day belonged to Chikitha and Sahil.

Chikitha watched her parents sell off their rice harvester, and was cheated out of a good quality bow by a fraud of Rs 1.5 lakh. But the family kept at it. A karate black belt, she was built to be tough. Sahil watched his father suffer a job loss during Covid and continued shooting with bent arrows, till his mother sold off her jewellery to refurbish his equipment. The compound bow might be simple in essence — it has sights and a vibration regulator so no recoil-equivalent — but stories of Indian practitioners are about beating difficult odds, and winning.