Married couple Kumari and Das partner with former international archer with Olympic medal in mind
Seasoned archery couple Deepika Kumari and Atanu Das have taken the first step towards realising their dream of winning a medal at LA28 Olympic Games, less than six months since hiring former international archer-turned-coach Rahul Banerjee.
Kumari and Das have just been selected in the Indian team for the first and second stage of the 2025 Hyundai Archery World Cup Stage to be held in April in Central Florida and in May in Shanghai. Both finished in the top four of the elimination round at the national team trials held in the regional training centre of Kolkata last week.
The partnership, which began last August following a casual discussion between Das and Banerjee at a commentary stint during the Paris 2024 Olympics, will see the trio work together until LA28. The two archers currently train at the Dola & Rahul Banerjee Archery Academy.
“We have played and won medals together in the past, so we connected very well,” said Das. “Being a former player, [Rahul] also had the same hunger for an Olympic medal – he understood us so well, pointed out the mistakes that we were making.”
“The most important things in the training with him have been the follow-ups. It has been going great so far.”
Kumari, India’s most decorated archer having won medals in every competition except the Olympics, has been attempting to win that elusive medal in the last four Games, while Das has been to two Olympics – Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 – but with no success either.
Banerjee, a Commonwealth Games Champion and Asian Games team bronze medallist in 2010, runs his archery academy with his sister Dola Banerjee, another celebrated archer in India, in Kolkata. The training centre is supported by Gameskraft Foundation.
Rahul’s philosophy is clear – enjoy playing archery rather than thinking about just winning medals.
“They are elite players, so the coaching approach has been very different,” said the 38-year-old. “We did a lot of gap analyses and kept things flexible – if one idea doesn’t work then we switch to another.”
“The work is on overall aspect of their game – right from their lifestyle, diet, fitness, equipment, psychological and technical. We are even trying new strategies during tournaments and that’s working for both Deepika and Atanu,” Banerjee added.
The married couple showed immediate results within just a few months of following former international’s coaching regime.
Das won a medal at the national ranking tournament before taking bronze in the recurve men’s event at the Swiss Open Lausanne indoor event in November.
Kumari, who also joined her husband in Kolkata to train, claimed a silver at the Tlaxcala 2024 Hyundai Archery World Cup Final in October. The former top-ranked Indian defeated two Paris 2024 Olympic medallists, Xiaolei Yang and Alejandra Valencia, on her way to the gold medal match, months after faltering in the quarterfinals at those Games.
Das and Kumari together went on to win a mixed team gold medal at their national championships in Jamshedpur in December, and just days later made the cut for India’s senior team.
“The best takeaway was when Deepika told me that more than the result she enjoyed shooting after a long time,” concluded Rahul Banerjee, eager to see the duo end their long wait.
