Dhiraj Bommadevara has won four World Cup medals so far this year, an individual bronze to go with three team medals. In a year when India’s compound archers have taken centre stage, the world No.17 will be the only recurve entry in the Archery World Cup Final in Hermosillo, Mexico on September 9-10. It is, therefore, somewhat odd to hear the 22-year-old talk about a sense of joy in experiencing failures.
“I’ve learnt so much from failures that in tournaments that I do well, I sometimes feel weird that I didn’t learn anything from it,” Dhiraj said. “Jeetne ka maza alag hai (winning brings a different feeling) but learning from failures is what makes you stronger and takes your career forward.”
A career that, met with frequent obstacles, almost never took off.
Dhiraj was four when his father took him to the Volga Archery Academy in Vijayawada and the kid soon began ditching football games to get his hand on a bow and arrow. His father, who left his job as a school principal in Sikkim and shifted to Andhra, set up his own modest primary school there after an unsuccessful business attempt left him without the money to enroll his son in a private school.
The academy, run by former India archer Cherukuri Lenin and his father Satyanarayana, ensured that despite his family’s limited resources, Dhiraj was never short of arrows to train. “From a young age, he would practice 6-7 hours a day,” Satyanarayana said.
Archery was fun and life smooth for Dhiraj until “everything changed” in 2010, when Lenin died in a road accident (his sister Volga, after whom the now-famed academy was named, also died in a road crash a few years ago). A couple of years later, the building on which his father’s school premises had been rented was sold, forcing their school to shut, cutting off the family’s only source of income.
“For those 2-3 years, I felt like nothing is left. Archery chodh bhi nahi rahe the, par kuch ho bhi nahi raha tha (I hadn’t left archery, but nothing was happening in it as well),” Dhiraj said.
The “aar ya paar (make or break)” moment would come in 2017 when Dhiraj was called for the Youth World Championships trials. With no money for a decent bow, his father — he went on to become an archery judge with the national federation — pledged the family’s gold ornaments for Dhiraj to buy one. “I knew this was my last chance,” he said.
From the trials where the top three made the cut, he came fourth. Shattered, Dhiraj’s mind veered towards leaving the sport. “I had got 93% in Class 10, so I thought I’ll go back to academics.”
A lifeline was provided by Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ), which took him under its wings and training under Korean coach Kim Hagyong at the Army Sports Institute (ASI) in Pune followed. Dhiraj shifted to ASI — he was later recruited by them — in 2018, from when equipment was no longer a worry, and a monthly stipend of Rs.15,000 helped run his household and his archery career progressed.
Setbacks remained a companion, though. Part of the gold-winning men’s U-21 team at the 2021 World Youth Championships, Dhiraj finished fourth in the Tokyo Olympics trials (top three sealed the spot) in another near miss. At the Asian Games trials last year, Dhiraj came ninth on the trials’ fifth and final day after being in the top three for the first four.
“Bachpan se aadat hai (I’m used to it from a young age),” Dhiraj chuckled when asked about overcoming disappointments.
Dhiraj made amends at the trials for the postponed Asian Games where he was among the best four men in recurve, which is the Olympic discipline. At World Cup Stage 1 in Antalya in April, he won the individual bronze beating compatriot Tarundeep Rai in the quarter-finals. Dhiraj enjoys the company of senior teammates “Tarundeep bhaiya” and “Atanu (Das) bhaiya”, learns from them and wins medals with them; the men’s team won silver at World Cup Stage 1 and bronze in Stage 3 and 4.
The World Championships last month, which offered Paris Olympics quotas, however did not go as planned. The team ended eighth while Dhiraj, after an optimistic qualification round where he finished second with a high score of 683, crashed out in the fourth round.
“From the archer that I was in the first World Cup to now, I’ve learnt and grown a lot. Coming up with world-level scores, competing with world-class archers, I’ve understood that the level is high,” he said. “Unfortunately, while in all other tournaments I did well, I fell short of my own benchmark at the Worlds. I felt bad. It was a great learning experience. But in the end, we didn’t get the quota.”
Which is what Dhiraj is after this year. The Asian Games might be the focus for most members of the Indian contingent, but Dhiraj’s focus is the Asian Championships in November, “because it offers a team quota for Paris”.
“I want to get it (quota spot) as soon as possible so that we can focus on preparing for the Olympics.”
