Asian Games 2023: Indian archers forge historic medal haul

Indian archery astounds, claims nine Asian Games 2023 medals, doubling prior tally.

Archery is one of the sports in which the Indian archery team gathered immense success in the 19th Asian Games. Archers' magnificent outing let India add nine medals to their tally, which overall registered 107 medals in Hangzhou, People's Republic of China. However, the archers stood out and gave the best-ever performance in the Asian Games by an archery contingent; it was the compound archers who made it big.

Out of nine medals, seven came from compound archery, and five of them were gold. Whereas the recurve archery team contributed two medals out of nine. Interestingly, India only had 10 medals in the history of the Asian Games and in the 19th edition, we almost doubled our overall history missing by just one medal.

List of Participants

There were 16 archers who competed in the team as well as the individual events.

Recurve Archery: Bhajan Kaur, Prachi Singh, Ankita Bhakat, Simranjeet Kaur, Dhiraj Bommadevara, Atanu Das, Mrinal Chauhan, Tushar Shelke

Compound Archery: Avneet Kaur, Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Aditi Gopichand Swami, Parneet Kaur, Prathamesh Jawkar, Rajat Chauhan, Ojas Pravin Deotale, Abhishek Verma

Key Highlights

There is no doubt the favorable outcomes poured out from the discipline of compound archery. The compound archers showed world-class precision in their aiming capabilities and won all five gold medals in the discipline, which includes men's Team, women's team, men's individual, women's Individual, and mixed team.

Whereas the other two compound archery medals came in men's singles and women's singles events where Abhishek Verma won silver, and Aditi Swami won bronze. Interestingly, we might have won silver instead of the bronze Aditi won because she lost to Jyothi Vennam in the semifinals. Certainly, this incredible show by the compound archers was something that stood out in this Indian archery team.

Top Three Performers

It is not very complex to pick out the top three performers from this Indian archery team. Ojas Pravin Deotale, Jyothi Surekha Vennam, and Abhishek Verma completely rose to the moment and clinched the best medals they could.

Deotale and Vennam clinched three gold medals, whereas Verma bagged a gold and a silver at Hangzhou. All three archers were pretty constant at shooting 10s, but the most consistent was Ojas, as he scored 150/150 in two consecutive rounds.

Underperformers

Despite the remarkable success of the compound archers, the recurve archery team, under the leadership of seasoned Olympian Atanu Das, encountered difficulties in making a notable impact at the Asian Games 2023. While the recurve archers managed to secure two medals in team events, their performance in individual competitions fell short of expectations.

Atanu Das, with extensive experience, exited the competition early, and none of the recurve archers managed to reach the podium in individual events. This was a challenging phase for the recurve archery team, highlighting the need for improvement and resurgence in future competitions.

What's next?

The big upcoming event for the archers will be the 2024 Paris Olympics. Unfortunately, compound archery is not one of the disciplines in the Olympics, and only recurve archery is a part. Hence, we won't be seeing five gold medalists at the Olympics.

However, the recurve team, who didn't impress a lot with their performance at the Asian Games, has a chance to flip the results next time. Former world number one Deepika Kumari, who missed the Asian Games, will get another chance to qualify for the Olympics in the qualification process which will take place in January 2024.

Archery was a big medal scorer for India at the Hangzhou Asian Games, with compound archery contributing massively to that success. However, they won't be seen in the Olympics, the bright archers will surely make their mark in the other world events. On the other hand, it was a below-par outing for the recurve archers, but they definitely tend to bounce back harder and perform better in the upcoming big stages.