Deepika Kumari is one of India’s bright Olympic hopes. She qualified for the Archery event at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games under the category Recurve (Singles and Team). She is a Padma Shri (2016) and Arjuna Awardee (2012). Deepika will compete in the women’s recurve team event with Bombayla Devi and Laxmirani Majhi. She is currently World No. 5 in the Women’s Archery.

The young archer is a force to be reckoned with, both in the individual as well as team recurve events at Rio.

Qualification

Deepika qualified for the Rio Olympics in the women’s recurve event of the 2015 Archery World Cup in Shanghai, while the Indian team won a bronze medal. Deepika also equalled a world record by shooting 686/720 which is held by London Olympics gold-medallist Ki Bo Bae of South Korea.

Earning the spotlight

The 22-year-old archer began her long list of championship titles by winning the 11^th Youth World Archery Championship in Palton Hansda, USA. She is the second Indian to achieve the feat. Deepika won two gold medals (recurve team and singles) in the 2010 Commonwealth games. At the 2010 Asian Games in China, she landed a bronze in the team event.

Deepika Kumari won her first World Cup individual stage recurve gold medal in Turkey in 2012. The gold medal in Turkey propelled her to World No. 1. In 2013, she won the Gold Medal in Archery World Cup held in Colombia. At the World Championships 2015 in Copenhagen, she won a team silver along with Laxmirani Majhi and Rimil Buriuly. In November 2015, she won a bronze medal in the Asian Championships in the Recurve Mixed Team event.

Route to Rio

In terms of Deepika’s recent performances, she took the archery world by storm by equalling South Korean Bo-Bae’s record in the women’s recurve event at the Archery World Cup 2016 in Shanghai. This did not come as a surprise to her coaches. As she had been outdoing accomplished archers in camps and other practice sessions.

Medal Quest

For the first time in the Olympics history, archery competitions will be conducted under floodlights. The event will start in the morning, but since it is winter season, the days will be short in Rio. Thus, there’s a high probability that the matches will stretch until late in the evenings. Also what could play as an added difficulty for the Indian team is the possibility of winds affecting their game.

The format was first introduced during the test event at Rio last year. The Indian archers participated in the event but their lack of practice under lights ended up in a poor showing.

India’s archery team became the first team from India to arrive in Brazil ahead of Rio Olympics 2016. Their poor showing during last year’s test event makes them wary and feel the need to acclimatise ahead of the Olympic Games. The inability to perform after much hype at the London Olympics, the team would focus on remaining “distraction free” this time around.

Deepika Kumari had some slight troubles with her shoulder, ‘It is a slight trouble on my right shoulder, but I’ll be okay soon,’ she said. India’s medal hopes are strong for the women’s archery team and also there’s a lot of expectation from the former World number one at Rio.