No kidding!

V.RAJU

At an age when tiny tots play with toys, three-year-old archer Dolly Shivani Cherukuri from Vijayawada has created a record in the recurve segment in two distances - seven and five metres - at the Volga Archery Academy.

India Book of Records adjudicator and Chief Editor, Biswaroop Roy Choudary, says Shivani is truly a prodigy in archery. "We wanted her to shoot 200 points in both distances. But she registered almost double (388 points) with ease."

Shivani shot 72 (36 each) arrows at the target face to score a whopping 388, that included three 10s. "Shivani scored 199 in the seven metres distance where the size of the target face was 122 centimetres. Next she took up the challenge in the five-metre distance where the target face was 88 centimetres. She scored 189 points," said her coach Laguri Chandrasekhar.

Shivani is the kid sister of Cherukuri Lenin, a former India coach and international archer, who was killed in a road accident near Vijayawada, soon after the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games.

An 18-minute video on Shivani's practice regime posted on Youtube is already making waves in the social media.

J. R. Shridharan