Tokyo Olympics: The sport in which India is likely to win its first-ever Olympic Medal - Archery

Indian Archery couple Deepika Kumari & Atanu Das: India's big medal hopes at the Tokyo Olympics
Indian Archery couple Deepika Kumari & Atanu Das: India's big medal hopes at the Tokyo Olympics

India is set to send a very strong contingent to the Tokyo Olympics, including its strongest-ever archery teams. The Tokyo Olympics are set to start on July 23rd after almost a year-long delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Over a hundred Indian athletes have already qualified for the Tokyo Olympics and another 25 to 30 athletes are expected to make the final cut. If the Indian contingent is able to perform according to its potential, then India is set to achieve its biggest ever medal haul at the Olympics.

The majority of India's medals in these games are expected to come from the sport of shooting, in which India has become a superpower in recent years. Shooting has been India's strongest sport in the Olympics in recent years, fetching them the maximum number of individual medals.

The same is expected at the Tokyo Olympics as well.

Read More: Tokyo Olympics 2020 Schedule

Indian players are also expected to win medals in sports which have produced Olympic medals before. These include boxing, wrestling, hockey, weightlifting, athletics and badminton.

India is also fielding strong and talented athletes in some of the events which have not traditionally been India's strong point.

As a result, the Indian contingent has a decent chance of winning medals in events in which they have never won an Olympic medal before. In this article, we take a look at the sport in which India has the biggest chance of winning their first ever Olympic medal at the Tokyo Olympics.

Indian Archery at the Tokyo Olympics

India's greatest archer, Deepika Kumari: India's gold medal hope at the Tokyo Olympics
India's greatest archer, Deepika Kumari: India's gold medal hope at the Tokyo Olympics

Archery is an event in which India has produced many champion athletes over the years. These include Limba Ram, Dola Banerjee, Jayanta Talukdar, Dipika Kumari and Atanu Das to name a few.

These archers have been the very best in the world and have won multiple medals in all the major International archery events such as the World Cups, the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games. However, an Olympic medal is an achievement which has eluded them in spite of repeated efforts in the last three decades.

Dola Banerjee: One of the legendary Indian archers of the past
Dola Banerjee: One of the legendary Indian archers of the past

The Indian archery team, led by former world champion Deepika Kumari, will be determined to break the jinx at the Tokyo Olympics and win India its first ever Olympic medal in Archery.

India has already qualified for four of the five archery events in Tokyo - Men's Recurve Individual, Men's Recurve Team, Women's Recurve Individual and Mixed team Recurve. The Women's Recurve team will try and qualify by being in the top three in the final qualifying event in Paris.

The Indian archers have a very bright chance of winning their first ever Olympic medals in archery in the following three events, if they perform according to their potential.

a) Women's Recurve Individual: Deepika Kumari

b) Mixed Team Recurve: Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari

c) Men's Recurve Team: Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai and Pravin Jadav

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Edited by Rohit Mishra