Ankita Bhakat after Asian Championship gold: ‘Needing 9 on last shot, memories of 7 flashed in front of eyes…but I….’

Coach Purnima Mahato had told the Kolkata recurve archer, 'Enough of team medals, now you need to win an individual gold.'

Indian archer Ankita Bhakat won a gold at the Asian Championships. (PHOTO: World Archery media)

Ankita Bhakat had returned from the Paris Olympics with a bouquet of brickbats. She had wildly misfired a horror shot of 4, then an ill-timed 7 in the bronze medal match, after a pair of insufficient 10s against Koreans in semis, and had ended with a 4th place finish in mixed team alongside Dhiraj Bommadevara. It was India’s best performance in Archery at the Olympics, but a no-medal was as good as nothing, and the Indian archers copped all the usual criticism.

But one thing had been evident to all coaches at the India camp: Ankita had no fear of Koreans, those serial champions of the sport. She followed a particular mindset that kept her alert when she faced off against them, but it never left her paralysed with nerves.

At the archery Asian Championship in Dhaka, the 27-year-old from Kolkata stood at the finals station, ready as ever against Korean Nam Suhyeon. She wasn’t aware that it was the Paris Olympics silver medallist she was up against. “Actually I had forgotten she had silver. When the coach reminded me just before finals, I thought, ‘Achha, yeh silver medallist bhi hai. Chalo theeke.’ The thing is, all Koreans are equally dangerous, so I always go in expecting a tight match,” she recalled.

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It ended in a five-set 7-3 win as Ankita took the first and fourth sets 29-27 and 29-28 respectively, drew the second 26-26 and soaked up the Korean defiance in the third that she lost 26-28.

In the deciding fifth, Ankita needed a 9 on the last shot, and Indian Archery is riddled with countless instances of messing up the crucial arrow. Ankita herself had shot a few condemning 7s. “In the last round I had a couple of 10s and was shooting well. But needed 9 on the final. Of course I thought of the 7s that had cost us medals. But I simply told myself ‘no more 7’. I recalled my process and calmly shot the 9,” she said.

Olympics misses have no redemption, really. They are the difference between a sport taking off or being reduced to the periphery. “At some point, you realise, revisiting the misses makes life worse. I was bored with being miserable. I decided to focus on my shooting and used the mindset. With Koreans, they never give you a chance. They are always good. So I decided I’ll be better than their good,” says the Kolkata archer, who’s helped her father rest a little, not having to wake up at 4 am to run their milk dairy.

It had been a quiet year for the fearless archer who shoots with an eye-popping string tension of 44 on her bow – needing serious muscle-strength pull. “I was a little upset because I didn’t have a single medal from World Cups this year. Coach Purnima Mahato had told me before landing in Dhaka that ‘enough of team medals, bohot ho gaye, now you need to win an individual medal’,” she said.

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Fellow Kolkatan, coach Rahul Banerjee had tweaked her techniques a bit, as had Tata coaches Mahato and Prasanna Kumar. “Technically, mentally, I had to improve. I told myself I’ve come this far in the final, and that I have been shooting well, so there’s no reason to get tensed in the final and shoot badly. I was good,” she said confidently.

Earlier, she had edged out Deepika Kumari in the semis, after both shot 5-5 and her shootoff 9 was millimeters closer to the centre than Deepika’s. Dhiraj Bommadevara too would silence his Olympic demons, winning gold. India swept the Recurve finals, as he defeated compatriot Rahul, after downing Jang Chae-hwan.