December 21, 2024

When good things happen, they happen in pairs. Till the day before yesterday, India never had a world champion in archery. Yesterday, two Indians took pole position on the podium and gave the country two world champions in a single day. 17-year-old Aditi Swami, already the junior world champion (she won the title in June), vanquished markswomen more celebrated than her to add another feather to her cap - she became the youngest and the first ever Indian to win the world championship title in the senior compound event. To add to the celebrations in the Indian camp, Ojas Deotale hit a perfect 150 in the finals of the men's compound event to add another gold medal. He too became the first-ever Indian male archer to win gold in the World Championships.

Only the day before Aditi had won another gold when she powered the Indian women's team to gold in the compound team event. Her rise has been meteoric and she is now being viewed as the player to beat in archery circles. Before her win in these championships, she was ranked at number 30 in the world. But that is going to change now (the latest rankings are awaited).

At 21, Ojas Deotale is also young. His early style was unorthodox but he has worked on it to achieve success. His perfect 150 in the finals was amazing and a tribute to his focus and temperament. Deotale was ranked 34 in the world before his gold.

Both Swami and Deotale have just started and are expected to bring many more laurels for the country. Both train at the Drushti Academy, run by Pravin Sawant, a former police constable out of a sugarcane field in Satara in Maharashtra.