Deepika Kumari

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Deepika Kumari
commonwealth archery gold medalist
Personal information
Nationality Indian
Born (1994-06-13) 13 June 1994 (age 29)
Ranchi, Bihar, India
Residence Ranchi, Jharkhand, India
Height 1.61 m (5 ft 3 in) (2010)
Weight 56 kg (123 lb) (2010)
Sport
Country India
Sport Archery
Club Tata Archery Academy
Team Indian Archery Women Team
Turned pro 2006
Achievements and titles
Highest world ranking 1,[1] World record women recurve archery[2]

Deepika Kumari (born 13 June 1994) is an Indian athlete who competes in the event of Archery, is currently ranked World No. 5, and is a former world number one.[3][4] She won a gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth games in the women's individual recurve event. She also won a gold medal in the same competition in the women's team recurve event along with Dola Banerjee and Bombayala Devi.[5]

Kumari qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, where she competed in the Women's Individual and Women's team events, finishing in eighth place in the latter.[6]

She was conferred the Arjuna Award, India's second highest sporting award in the year 2012 by President of India Pranab Mukherjee.[7] In February 2014, she was honored with FICCI Sportsperson of the Year Award.[8] The Government of India awarded her the civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2016.[9]

Early life

Deepika Kumari was born to Shivnarayan Mahato, an auto-rickshaw driver and Geeta Mahato, a nurse at Ranchi Medical College. Her parents live at Ratu Chati village, 15 km away from Ranchi. As a child, she practised archery while aiming for mangoes with stones.[10] In the early days it was rather difficult for the parents to financially support Deepika's dream, often compromising on the family budget to buy her new equipment for her training; as a result, Deepika practised archery using homemade bamboo bows and arrows. Deepika's cousin Vidya Kumari, then an archer residing at Tata Archery Academy, helped her develop her talent.

Career

Deepika made her first breakthrough in 2005 when she entered Arjun Archery Academy, an institute set up by Meera Munda, wife of chief minister of the state Shri. Arjun Munda at Kharsawan. But her professional archery journey began in the year 2006 when she joined the Tata Archery Academy in Jamshedpur. It was here that she started her training with both the proper equipment as well as a uniform. She also received Rs 500 as a stipend. Deepika returned home once in her first three years there, only after having won the Cadet World Championship title in November 2009.[11]

Achievements

Deepika became the second Indian to win the title after Palton Hansda won the junior compound competition at the 2006 Archery World Cup in Mérida, Mexico.[12]

She won the 11th Youth World Archery Championship held in Ogden, USA in 2009, at the age of fifteen. She also won a gold medal in the same competition in the women's team recurve event, alongside Dola Banerjee and Bombayala Devi.

At the Delhi Commonwealth games 2010, Deepika won two gold medals, one in the individual event and the other in the women's team recurve event. For this, she was honoured with the Outstanding Performance at CWG (Female) Award at the 2010 Sahara Sports Awards ceremony.

Later at the Asian Games of 2010, held in Guangzhou, China, Deepika missed out on a medal after she lost to Kwon Un Sil of North Korea in the bronze-medal play-off of the women's individual archery event. But as a part of the Indian archery recurve team, along with Rimil Buriuly and Dola Banerjee, Deepika edged out Chinese Taipei 218–217 in the bronze play-off to ensure a podium finish at the Aoti Archery Range.

In May 2012, Deepika Kumari won her first World Cup individual stage recurve gold medal at Antalya, Turkey. She beat Korea's Lee Sung-Jin by sex set points to four in the final.[13] Later in 2012, she would go on to become world no. 1 in Women's Recurve Archery. In London Olympics 2012, Deepika Kumari lost against Amy Oliver of Great Britain in the opening round, attributing a relatively poor performance to fever and high winds.[14][15]

On 22 July 2013, she won the Gold Medal in Archery World Cup stage 3 held at Medellin, Colombia where India finished fourth.[16] On 22 September 2013, Deepika lost 4-6 to Yun Ok-Hee of South Korea & settled for Silver Medal in 2013 FITA Archery World Cup. This was her 3rd Silver medal in as many appearances in the World Cup Final.[17]

In 2014, Deepika was featured by Forbes (India) as one of their '30 under 30'.[15] However, she failed to make the Indian team for 2014 after finishing outside the top 4 at the national qualifications.[18]

In 2015, Deepika's first medal came at the second stage of the World Cup, where she won a bronze in the individual event. At the World Championships in Copenhagen, she won a team silver along with Laxmirani Majhi and Rimil Buriuly, after narrowly losing out on a gold in a match against Russia which they conceded 4–5 in a shoot-off. In the latter half of this year, she won the silver medal in the World Cup final. In November 2015, she won a bronze medal in the Asian Championships with Jayanta Talukdar in the Recurve Mixed Team event.

In April 2016, at the first stage of the World Cup in Shanghai, Deepika equaled the Ki Bo-bae's world record of (686/720) in the women's recurve event.[19]

Individual performance timeline

Tournament 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 SR
World Archery tournaments
Olympic Games 1R 0/1
World Championships 3R 3R 3R 1/3
World Cup
Stage 1 3R QF 2nd 0/4
Stage 2 QF 3R W 2R 3R 3rd 2/6
Stage 3 3R 2nd QF 1/3
Stage 4 2nd 3rd QF 3rd 34
World Cup Final QF 2nd 2nd 2nd DNQ 2nd 4/5
End of year world ranking 4 5 2 3

References

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  6. Deepika Kumari - London 2012 Olympics athlete profiles
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  10. "Deepika Kumari: From mangoes to CWG gold", The Siasat times, 10 October 2010, Retrieved 10 October 2010.
  11. "Father accepts Deepika has proved him wrong", The Hindustan times, 11 October 2010, Retrieved 11 October 2010.
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External links