From Dipa Karmakar’s exemplary floor vault final qualification to Atanu Das’ unlikey pre quarter-final journey, India’s first four Rio Olympic days belonged to the underdogs. The 24-year old archer from West Bengal showed nerves of steel to hit back to back tens, registering a thrilling victory against Cuba’s Adrian Andres Puento. The only male Indian archer in the Olympic draw, he qualified 5th for the knockout stages and defeated Nepal’s Jitbahadur Muktan with an impressive final set score of 30/30 to keep India’s medal hopes alive.
Speaking exclusively to Sportskeeda, he said, “I am grateful for all the support shown by everyone. I came in with no expectations, I was excited to play my first match, but was also a bit nervous. But, I kept thinking of a lot of possible of combinations, since it was my first match. Once I reached the venue, I took it shot by shot, and didn’t focus on the result and that’s paid off.”
On your day, even the world number 1 could be a comfortable win in Archery: Atanu
He added, “I believe in an event such as the Olympics every opponent is the same, all that matters is your ability to hit your shots on the day. If you see Kim, the guy who got the world record. He told the everyone that he would break the World record, and he did it. However, he has been knocked out in the second round, so the pressures of everyday archery is different and the situations keep chaning. My goal is just to keep myself unnerved for the future matches.”
Atanu will now face medal favourite South Korean Lee Seung-Yun in his next encounter. They have faced each other only once two years ago in a World Cup event, where Lee came out on top. Self admittedly, handling extrinsic mental pressure has been the key to the Bengal archer’s success so far. He said, “For the last two years of my career, I have specifically worked on improving my mental pressure as it was one of my weak points. I specifically focus on exercises such as Pranayam or just staring at the wall for four to five hours, without being distracted at any cost. It’s a simple yet affective exercise. For example, here in Rio the biggest problem is the wind. Before I would let that affect me mentally, but now I treat it as a situation we both are in and have to work around.”
The national women’s archery team told Sportskeeda earlier that their quarter-final loss to Russia was solely based on their inability to handle mental pressure, towards the final few shots. Atanu was selected after being adjudged the best former across seven selection trials in 2015. In the last two years, he had also paritcipated in two World Cup events, both individual and team. The first event, Atanu lost in the pre-quarter final stage, but helped India win a bronze in the team event. In early 2016, he narrowly missed out on a bronze medal in the individual event in Turkey, and won silver in he mixed team event.
He said,”It would be unfair for me to say that only the World Cup events were pivotal for me. The domestic events helped me use a trial and error system and apply various aspects on my game before the Olympics. Be it physical or mental training, the last two years, I’ve been working on keeping these two to three days in mind and I’m quite sure that I will be my 110 % on August 12. I will bring my A game, if he slips I will capitalise.”
Atanu is scheduled to fight Kim for a spot in the quarter-finals on August 12 at 17:43 p.m IST.
