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Deepika Kumari to lead Indian squad at Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

08 mars 2021

Pune, India

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Deepika Kumari shoots during the test event for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Deepika Kumari, Pravin Jadhav, Atanu Das and Tarundeep Rai have been named to the Indian team for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games after the last phase of trials, which finished today at the Army Sports Institution in Pune.

The country has currently qualified three men’s and one women’s quota place for archery at the Games.

World number nine Deepika Kumari is set to shoot at her third consecutive Olympics, having finished top of the trials. Now aged 26, Kumari won the Commonwealth Games in Delhi back in 2010. She was the world’s top-ranked recurve woman arriving at London 2012 and made it into the third round at Rio 2016, finishing ninth overall.

Deepika was also the subject of the Netflix documentary Ladies First, released on this date three years ago to celebrate International Women’s Day. She dominated the recent selection tournaments.

Kumari, Ankita Bhakat and reigning under-18 world champion Komalika Bari will attempt to augment India’s women’s quota for the Olympics from one to a full three at the final qualification tournament in Paris in June. If they succeed, the entire trio will head to Tokyo one month later.

All three archers shoot for Jharkhand province.

Jadhav, Das and Rai took the recurve men’s team silver medal for India at the 2019 Hyundai World Archery Championships in ’s-Hertogenbosch.

Rai, an Olympian in 2004 and 2012, needed a strong result on the very last day of the selection events to retain his place in the squad. Das will shoot at his second consecutive Games, having finished ninth at Rio 2016. It will be Jadhav’s first Olympics.

Dhiraj Bommadevara and Madhu Vedwan will join the top teams at the first and third stages of the Hyundai Archery World Cup – in Guatemala City and Paris – where nations are permitted to enter four athletes in each category. A second team is expected to attend stage two.

Deepika Kumari and Atanu Das got married in June 2020. They have previously competed as a pair.

The mixed team event will make its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, bringing the total number of available archery medals to five for the first time in the sport’s modern history.

Despite some incredible promise, India has never won an archery medal at the Olympic Games.