Dhiraj Bommadevara went to compete at the Ayodhya archery nationals in the last week of November on short notice with a lot of expectations. With a maiden World Cup medal, wins over Olympic champions Brady Ellison and Oh Jin Hyek, an Asian Games team silver medal, and most importantly, an Olympic quota at the Asian Championships in Bangkok last month, the 22-year-old from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, who is also the highest-ranked Indian in the world, had been the standout archer for India this season.
If things had gone according to form and pedigree, Dhiraj could have been in the National Championship final, shooting in front of the historic Nageshwar Nath temple on the Sarayu riverbank. All rounds apart from the final were held at Government Inter College.
But although he shot a solid 684 in the qualification round, Dhiraj, representing Services, faltered in the semis of the individual recurve category, losing to Asian Games reserve shooter Mrinal Chauhan. Then, in the team event, the three-man Services team lost in the first round despite coming in as top seeds. Dhiraj, though, is not disappointed. “That’s archery. We shot 28 (out of a possible 30, with Dhiraj shooting a perfect 10) in the team event, and those guys shot 30,” says Dhiraj, who returned from the competition with a solitary bronze.
“The one thing I’ve learned this year is that the best learning comes after you lose. It’s good to lose now so that you can perform where it matters,” he says.
Big dreams, big changes
In seven months time, he hopes to be shooting in an iconic location: the Les Invalides complex in Central Paris. The 2024 Olympic Games loom large on his horizon. Although it’s never out of his mind, Dhiraj is reminded of it each time he glances at his phone, which has the five Olympic rings as wallpaper. Even the primary purpose of the National Championship was to help prepare for that competition.
“I’ve changed the string on my bow. I’ve got a new string called Majesty 777 that’s made in Japan. Compared to the string I used before, this one punches the arrow a little harder when I release it. I wanted to try to see how that worked in a tournament. And it’s better to try it here rather than at the Olympics,” he says.
It’s not just his bowstring that has changed in recent times. Over the past year, Dhiraj has started shooting with a heavier bow. “I used to shoot a bow with a draw weight (the force stored by a bow when drawn completely) of 44 pounds until last year. I now shoot a bow with a 46-pound draw weight,” he says. With more energy powering his arrows, Dhiraj doesn’t need to aim in as parabolic a path as he would normally have, which reduces the buffeting effect of wind on the projectile.
The change has been a challenging one.
“A two-pound weight difference doesn’t seem much, but the first time I shot with a 46-pound bow, my arms were shaking as if I were in an earthquake. In the qualifying rounds, you have to shoot a series of six arrows. I’d shoot the first four easily, but in the last two, I would find it hard to keep sight of the target. A movement of 1 millimetre at the time of release can see the arrow go from the yellow (10 and 9 points) to the blue (6 and 5 points) on the target. It also puts a lot of strain on your muscles. We sometimes shoot 400 arrows every day when we are training, so even a two-pound increase in draw weight means we are lifting an extra 800 pound every session,” he says.
Serene setting: The final round of the Archery Senior Nationals was played in front of the historic Nageshwar Nath temple on the Sarayu riverbank.. | Photo Credit: SANDEEP SAXENA
Korean stint
This month, Dhiraj will fly to South Korea to train under legendary coach Kim Hyung-Tak at the Hyung-Tak Archery Training Centre in Goesan Gun, Chunbuk.
“I’m going to train with coach Hyung-Tak for three weeks. There are a few minor technical issues I want to work on. But what I really want to train for is mental toughness. A lot of the world’s best archers are going to be training alongside me, so that will push me even more. I’m already shooting well. I don’t have that many technical issues. At my level, it’s mostly about mental upgrading,” he says.
The understanding that he needed to improve his mental conditioning, Dhiraj explains, wouldn’t have come if he was winning everything. While he’s had an exceptional year, 2023 was also perhaps the season Dhiraj has had to deal with his biggest mental tests. It came in the quarterfinals of the Asian Games.
Asian Games horror
Dhiraj’s failure at the Asian Games was nothing short of a horror show. After taking the first set convincingly, he missed the target twice in two subsequent sets in the individual quarterfinals in Hangzhou.
“I can never forget those misses. It was the first arrow of the second set and the second arrow of the fourth set. In archery, the medals are won by one or two points. You can’t even imagine missing the target. And that happened to me twice,” recalls the 23-year-old.
He would later discover that, whether due to nerves or eagerness to shoot, he was pinching the nock of the arrow with the three fingers he used to draw the bowstring. Just those few imperceptible grams of pressure shifted the alignment of the arrowhead: a millimetre awry at the release, and he missed the target 70 metres away.
“I’d never experienced anything like this before. I didn’t know how to prepare. I was doubting myself. After I lost, I just wanted to cry. I was so disappointed that I thought I would quit the sport. I still had the team event one day later. But I didn’t want to compete. I thought I was sure to let the team down,” he recalls.
All smiles: Vijayawada-based international archer Dhiraj Bommadevara won silver and bronze medals at the World Cup Stage I earlier this year. | Photo Credit: K. V. S. Giri
His teammates, Atanu Das and Tushar Shelke had his back. “The next day, I didn’t even want to practice. But Atanu Bhaiya told me to just come out and shoot. Even if I could improve by 1 per cent, he would be happy. Even the archers from other countries came up and supported me. Everyone knew that I was really struggling,” he says.
It was in that training session that Dhiraj figured out what had gone wrong. A day later, he led the team to its joint-best result at the Asian Games, finishing with a silver medal.
“More than the silver medal, I was grateful because I figured out exactly where I was going wrong. I also gained a lot of self-belief because I was able to stay and fight despite things going wrong. After the Asian Games, we had the Asian Championships, which were the Olympic qualifiers. I won the Olympic quota, and there is no way I would have won it if I faced the same problem in that competition. It’s because I was able to face it earlier and learn from it that I could learn and adjust,” he says.
He’s hoping the disappointment of the National Championship spurs him similarly. “When the 2024 season begins, we will have trials to select the team for the World Cups and the last Olympic qualifier. It will be as if I am beginning from zero once again. I have made mistakes, and hopefully, I’ve learned from them. As long as I perform where it matters most, I have no regrets,” he says.
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