World’s no. 1 archeress, Deepika Kumari, has nowdefeated the Russian Olympic committee by shooting with her bull’s eye, todayshe has advanced to the individual women quarterfinals of the Olympic games. Asper the scores, she had locked 5-5 by hitting the first perfect 10, the Russianworld champion Ksenia Perova was under pressure and misfired a 7, while Deepikaeasily shot a 6-5 (10-7).
Born on July 13, 1994, Deepika belongs to Ranchi, Jharkhand to Shivnarayan Mahato, an auto-rickshaw driver, and her mother Geeta Mahato whois a nurse at Ranchi Medical College.
She has now beaten Karma of Butan in the32nd Round and has booked her place in the last 16 in the women's individualarchery event. She is married to Atanu Das, who himself is an Indian archer, currently playing in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Games and occupies 9thranking in the world.
Her Passion towards Archery
Asa child, Deepika was really passionate about archery and used to aim at mangoeswith stones. It was a hard thing for her parents to financially support her butthey compromised their budget to buy her new equipment for practice. She evenmade homemade archery equipment with bamboo bows and arrows. Her cousin VidhyaKumari who was an archer who resided at Tata Archery Academy played asignificant role in developing her talent.
Her career
She entered ArjunArchery Academy in 2005, but professionally her journey began in 2006 when shejoined the Tata Archery Academy in Jamshedpur because her training involvedproper equipment as well as uniform. She used to return home once in 3 yearsand in November 2009, she won the Cadet World Championship title.
She was theone who finally brought India its first medal in Archery.
In Commonwealth Games 2010, she won 2 medals, one in thewomen’s team Recurve event and the other in the individual event. Deepika washonoured in the 2010 Sahara Sports Awards ceremony with an outstanding event. In2010, she lost a medal to North Korea. In 2012, she achieved top position inWomen’s Recurve Archery. In 2012, in London’s Olympics, she lost against GreatBritain.
In 2013, Deepika won gold in Archery World Cup and gotsilver in the 2013 FITA Archery World Cup. In the 2nd stage of the World Cup,she won bronze and silver in the World Championships. In April 2016, sheequalled the world record in the Women’s Recurve event. In the same year, shewas in the Indian team in the 2016 Rio Olympics, getting the 7th ranking. In2017, she featured a documentary, ‘ladies first’ that showed her life storyfrom a child to a top archer.
She won 3 gold medals in 2019, in Archery’s World CupStage 3 Tournament in Paris 2021. Due to which she was recorded as 13th triplegold and 11th archer to achieve the feat in 15 years history of Hyundai ArcheryWorld Cup. She won an individual competition at the Olympic Qualificationtournament in 2019 after which she secured a spot in the 2020 Tokyo OlympicGames.