Archery World Cup: Gold rush for India’s Jyothi Vennam

Such were the high standards she set for herself this week that Jyothi Vennam grimaced even after hitting the bullseye. Going through a purple patch, the archer wasn’t willing to settle for anything less than perfection. And in archery, perfection isn’t a mere 10 – it’s the inner 10 ring. Excruciatingly for Vennam, her arrow had landed just millimetres to the right.
It was nothing but sheer indulgence. For in the final count, inner 10s don’t matter much. But as Vennam, whose career until this week was littered with disappointments, pushed herself to the limit, her opponent in Saturday’s final, Colombia’s Sara Lopez stood a couple of feet away, smiling in admiration.
Lopez isn’t any other athlete. She is a compound archery royalty. A world champion (2021), a Pan American champion and a winner of 11 World Cup gold medals. Vennam’s CV couldn’t have been more contrasting. For 11 years, she’s been trying in vain to win a World Cup gold.
And when her time eventually came, she did it in some style. In a span of five days, she’s equalled a world record, won team bronze and followed it up with two gold medals on Saturday – in mixed team and individual. “I’m actually short of words,” she told World Archery after winning her maiden individual World Cup gold medal.
As she spoke, Vennam looked a little dazed, scarcely believing what she’d done. And it was easy to understand why.
She went into the season’s first World Cup as a nobody. The South Koreans had decided to give the Antalya leg a miss – they’ll be back for next month’s World Cup Stage 2 in Shanghai – but even then, the field was brimming with high-class archers. Britain’s Ella Gibson, the world number 1 and last year’s winner, looked primed to continue her dominance. Then there was the young Italian, Elisa Roner. And of course, there was Lopez.
Mixed team partners Jyothi and Ojas Deotale.
But on the first morning of her competition, Vennam threw down the gauntlet. In the qualifying round, she scored 713 out of a possible 720 points to equal the world record Lopez set in 2015. She then went on to win a bronze medal in the women’s team event before capping off a memorable week with the twin gold medals.
India has a chance to win two more gold medals. In the final of the men’s recurve team event, the trio of Atanu Das, Dhiraj Bommadevara and Tarundeep Rai will take on the mighty Chinese who are returning to the World Cup for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic. Later, Bommadevara will take on Dan Olaru in the individual semifinal.
Instant success
On the final day of compound events – which are relatively easier compared to recurve due to the make of the bow – Vennam could have very nearly returned with another world record.
India had fielded a new combination for the compound mixed team event, with Vennam partnering with 20-year-old Ojas Deotale instead of the seasoned Abhishek Verma. The Vennam-Verma combination won the World Games bronze medal last year along with the Paris World Cup gold.
But with a new crop of archers emerging across categories, India have been trying out different teams ahead of the Asian Games and Vennam-Deotale partnership has found instant success.
The duo breezed through the qualification rounds and faced a stiff challenge in the semifinals, where they took on Malaysia’s Fatin Nurfatehah Mat Salleh and in-form Mohd Juwaidi Mazuki. Both pairs were inseparable for most parts, with just one shot – an eight in the third set – proving costly for the Malaysians, as Vennam and Deotale won 157-155 to set up a title clash with Chinese Taipei’s Chen Yi Hsuan and Chem Chieh Lun.

Explained Why Jyothi’s success bodes well for Asian Games While compound archery — the easier of the two formats with recurve being the other, because of the technologically-aided bows — is not an Olympic event, Jyothi Vennam’s performance this week bodes well for India vis-à-vis the Asian Games.India’s only Asian Games archery gold medal has come in the compound team event, when Rajat Chauhan, Sandeep Kumar and Abhishek Verma stunned the South Koreans in their own backyard at the 2014 Incheon Games. In 2018, too, India’s two archery medals came in compound events, with recurve archers drawing a blank.Vennam – who won a team silver at the 2018 Asian Games and a team bronze at the 2014 Asiad – looks primed to lead the Indian challenge in Hangzhou and having won her maiden World Cup gold, she has set her sights on her first Asian Games gold as well.

The Indians were barely challenged in the final, which they won a comfortable score of 159-154. Vennam’s every shot was a 10 and India looked on course to set a world record but a 9 Deotale meant they fell agonisingly short.
Individual glory
Vennam, though, carried her mixed team form into the individual final. Having defeated archers from Switzerland, the USA, Mexico and Denmark in the early rounds, Vennam faced her toughest challenge in the semifinal where she took on Gibson.
Nothing separated the underachieving Indian and the reigning world number 1, with both archers tied at 118 each before the start of the fifth and the final set. But Gibson blinked first as her opening two shots in the final set were a 9. Vennam held her nerve and recorded a perfect score of 10 on each of her shots for the first big upset of the day.
If she was nervous in her maiden gold medal match, Vennam did not show it. As she did the whole week, Vennam hit 10 pointers on demand as she took an early lead over Lopez and never allowed her to make a comeback, eventually winning the final 149-146.