Sanjeeva Singh tries not to gloat but this is his ‘I told you so’ moment.
In 2004, when he introduced compound archery in India, the Arjuna and Dronacharya awardee was laughed out from training centres and federation offices. “They said, ‘Who is this guy? Why is he bringing compound archery into India?’” Sanjeeva recalls.
Nearly two decades on, India’s compound archers are World Cup winners, world champions and Asian Games gold medallists. The result assumes significance from a long-term point of view given that there are murmurs of compound, currently a non-Olympic category, being included in the Los Angeles Games in 2028.
And as much as these medals, the real reflection of India’s growing stature was that it was them and not South Korea – the true heavyweights of the world sport – who were the favourites heading into the Games.
India’s archers justified the tag, clinching the women’s and men’s team titles in addition to the mixed team gold they won earlier in the week.
In an edge-of-the-seat women’s team final, the top-seeded combination of Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Aditi Swami and Parneet Kaur shot a perfect 60 on 60 to beat the Chinese Taipei trio of Chen Yi-Hsuan, Huang I-Jou and Wang Lu-Yun 230-229.
Later, in the men’s final, Abhishek Verma, Ojas Deotale and Prathamesh Jawkar downed the South Koreans 235-230 to complete the team double.
India now find themselves at the cusp of their first-ever gold medal sweep in compound archery. In the individual finals on Saturday, Jyothi will hope to complete her golden hat-trick whereas in men, India are assured of a gold as both finalists with Verma facing Deotale.
The man largely responsible for turning India into a compound archery powerhouse is a gold medallist himself – not just in archery, but also in engineering.
As a player, Sanjeeva – now India’s High Performance Director – won more than 50 medals, nationally and internationally. As coach, the author of a book on archery is credited with ushering in a compound revolution, the roots of which can be traced back to his trip to New York for the 2004 World Championships.
It was then that Sanjeeva first came across the format and he returned to India with a single compound bow. Noticing that it was more mechanical and less strenuous on the arms, Sanjeeva believed it would suit the Indian physique.
“(But) people laughed at me. They said… ‘India has never won in recurve, why should we get this?’ Everybody was against me, they said, ‘No, no, this will not succeed’. But I knew this would succeed in India and we started training people,” Sanjeeva says.
“I knew this was one game that was ideally suited to Indian archers because we are not very strong in physique. So this game helped all our junior archers who were smaller in stature.”
Swimming against the tide
Before he began training others, the 1988 Olympian who had retired in 1996, learnt the art himself, not caring about those who mocked him.
Within a year – in 2005 – he became the national champion, nearly 10 years after he retired. His win, Sanjeeva says, lent some credence to his compound programme and he continued training young archers at the Tata Academy, where he was a coach.
Two years later, in 2007, Sanjeeva had his first brush with redemption when India won the compound archery title at the Asian Championship. It’s been a 15-year wait for India to repeat that achievement.
But that, Archery Association of India secretary Pramod Chandurkar – also a former international – said it was because the grassroots programmes in compound archery initiated back then are reaping rewards now.
For instance, Jyothi, from Andhra Pradesh, first picked up a compound bow in 2009, a couple of years after the first continental title. A few others, like Aditi Swami and Ojas Deotale, are products of mass-participation drives that began in the late 2000s in remote areas of Maharashtra.
None of it, they say, would have been possible had Sanjeeva not stumbled upon compound archery at the 2004 Worlds and brought it to India.
“It has taken me 20 years to bring it to the five-gold-medals stage. This year, we became world champions in Berlin, we are World Cup gold medallists and now we have multiple gold medals (in Hangzhou),” Sanjeeva says. “We have achieved the best that anyone can achieve.”
“I don’t need to tell anybody, ‘I told you so’. Because in my heart, I know. In anything, when you start, there will always be detractors, challenges and hurdles, but somebody has to be the first to try. So I’m very happy that I swam against the tide and stood up for what I believed in.”
Gold medal winning India's Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Aditi Gopichand and Parneet Kaur celebrate on the podium during the presentation ceremony of team compound archery event at the 19th Asian Games, in Hangzhou, China, Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023. (PTI Photo) 
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