Dhiraj Bommadevara bounces back from Asiad disappointment, and social media abuse, to win India’s first Archery quota for Paris Olympics | Sport-others News

Dhiraj Bommadevara’s heart went out to the Indian cricket team as it imploded nightmarishly on the biggest stage of the World Cup on a sullen Sunday night. The young archer had logged in India’s biggest goof up at the Asian Games at the start of October, shooting two zeroes after a mechanical error and a mental breakdown. So, he knew of the sinking feeling and social media avalanche of criticism that would follow, better than most. “When you have the worst day on the sports field, always remember, something bigger and better awaits you in the future if you pers,” he tells The Indian Express. Mercifully, he noticed, most World Cup fan reactions leant towards empathetic. “We Indians understand cricket, love our team and max I heard was ‘The team played well throughout the tournament, the whole country is with them as they deal with the defeat.’ With smaller sports like archery, it’s difficult to explain technical details of what goes wrong on the biggest stage and there’s a lot of emotional damage since it’s only negative comments after a failure,” the international archer who copped some nasty unprintables, says.
While the whole country was riding a crest of furious optimism watching 10 straight wins in cricket, Dhiraj was in Bangkok for the Archery Continental Qualifying Tournament, where he secured the country’s first quota for the Paris Olympics in individual recurve on November 11.
“The Asian Games blunder taught me that I hadn’t prepared for the worst eventuality. I went back and trained for it. Luckily, after my biggest failures, my family and fellow archers have always stood me. Only a teammate can completely understand what goes wrong, and they boosted my morale. I even contemplated quitting archery but my team asked me to pers. So when the quota came, I said ‘we’, the entire team had won the quota, not just me.”
Pinching horror
Dhiraj’s failure at Asian Games was a horror show. To the outsider, he shot the arrow outside the target for a gasp-inducing 0 in his individual quarterfinal at Hangzhou. Twice. “Second set, first arrow. Fourth set, second arrow. I’ll never forget those moments in my life,” recalls the 23-year-old.
Like sensitive trigger pressure in a gun, archery has that delicate moment when the arrow can get inadvertently pressed the three fingers on the bow string. The nock, or endpoint of an arrow, tilts and it lifts up sending the arrow haywire, and it bumbles outside of the target. It’s called pinching, and can make an archer look beyond ridiculous.
“I had been super calm, confident and in control and been shooting very well in practice. This was so unexpected because I had never encountered it in practice so wasn’t prepared for it,” he says. He would go blank the first time it happened. Pull himself together. Then like a never ending nightmare, the nock pinching would recur. “I first told myself it’ll be OK, I’ll bounce back. But when it happened again, my heart sank. After second miss and zero, I was going to collapse,” he recalls.
Dhiraj Bommadevara (Credit: World Archery)
He held back tears, sought an untelevised corner and properly broke down. It’s when his team of Atanu Das and Tushar Shelke, plus coaches who knew how pinching could spring up unannounced, rallied around him. “I knew it was a make, but they didn’t say, kya hi kar diya, tune (what did you do)? They told me how to remedy the fault. It needs minor change, but I couldn’t do it on stage,” he remembers.
The team medal was up next in four days. Usually, Dhiraj went up front, and Atanu, the most experienced, would shoot the finish. “I walked up to them before the team event, and told them I was still nervous, mujhse nai hoga (I won’t be able to do it), so could I shoot last. Finishing is actually toughest because you know the target score and can’t err. But without batting an eyelid, both teammates told me, go ahead, Tu bas maar (you just shoot). That showed they had confidence in me, and accepted it had been a bad day, not that I was weak under pressure.”
The nock slot would click into the string perfectly, and he’d shoot a 10. And then scream out his relief as silver was won. At the quota competition, he went prepared. “After Asian Games, I know, aur kya boora hoga, ek match mein 2 miss maarne ke baad (what could be worse after missing twice in one match)? I’ve faced the worst. The Paris quota came because I failed earlier and learnt from it,” he says.
Shaped setbacks
The youngster from Vijayawada, has horically encountered failures, and routinely bounced back from setbacks. None more tragic than losing childhood coach Cherukuri Lenin to a road accident when he was returning from the 2010 Commonwealth Games. For two years, children at the Cherukuri Volga academy would turn up with grief and without direction at the range, till the late coach’s father Satyanarayana could bear it no longer, and roped in coaches from Jharkhand.
Dhiraj always had options open having scored 93 percent in his Class X, but chose sport over academics. Even after his father, a school teacher, was out of a job, and had to sell the mother’s gold to buy him equipment, Dhiraj believes he got lucky that OGQ chipped in with support and found him a spot at Army Sports Institute, Pune. “It eased my parents’ burden so I decided to move to Pune, and found good coaching there with Korean coach Kim Hagyong.”
Near misses included not making it to Youth Olympics squad in 2018, and finishing fourth in trials for Tokyo Olympics, and missing the bus. “Had I played Youth Olympics, I wouldn’t have reached this far. The failures made me a better archer. Dhakke bohot lage. Main bohot roya hoo (Have faced a lot of setback. I’ve cried a lot).
“The social media comments of being a choker after Asian Games miss were worst. I knew they questioned my mental strength because I made a make, but in that moment, I emotionally broke down and didn’t think logically. But the Paris quota happened because failure in front of millions watching me shoot two zeroes on TV didn’t stop me from trying again,” he says.
Fearlessness, Dhiraj Bommadevara reckons, comes after hitting the lowest point of being terribly afraid. And confronting biggest nightmares like the arrow completely missing the entire target-board.