Deep breaths. 20 seconds. Rest your heartbeat, bring it down as much as possible. Draw your bow. Let fly. Wait to see where the arrow hits.
This is the routine India, represented by Dhiraj Bommadevara and Ankita Bhakat, followed across four matches within six-odd hours on Friday at the Olympic Games, their short but improbable journey captivating thousands of new archery fans across the country. It was unmissable - and also unimaginable.
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Imagine thinking, before Friday, that we'd have to stop what we were doing to watch an Olympic archery semifinal, an Olympic archery bronze medal match. That's what Paris 2024 has given us, what Bommadevara and Bhakat have given us.
India have often flattered to deceive in archery ahead of the Olympics, performing decently at the numerous World Cups (there are four a year), and even at times at the annual World Championships. But at the very highest level, India's done... well, nothing. This fact gets dragged out every Olympic cycle, and the conversations around the archers take the unkindest turns.
At Paris, it was starting to feel very similar. The men's and women's teams went out without a whimper at the quarterfinal stage (the first knockouts they played). None of the three men made it even to the pre-quarterfinal stage. The brickbats were raining down, arrows unleashed by thousands of keyboards.
On Friday, that gloom was dispelled. Bommadevara and Bhakat (selected automatically because they finished highest in their respective qualifiers) walked out to the grand Esplanade des Invalides archery range, freed from the weight of expectation, and drew us into their story as the evening wore on.
In the pre-quarters, at 1:19 PM IST, they beat Indonesia 5-1 in a most routine manner. At 5:45 PM, they came out and beat Spain in much more dramatic fashion. Having won the first set, tied the second and lost the third, they were on the verge of exit in the fourth before Bommadevara nailed a ten on the last shot to confirm a 37-36 win in the set, and a 5-3 win overall. Their reward for this clutchness? A semifinal date at 7:01 PM with the greatest Olympic archery nation the world has seen.
And they gave South Korea a fright. Two nines from Bhakat, two 10s from the excellent Bommadevara and they'd taken the first set 38-36. Then Bhakat started the second set with an 8, and that was that. It may sound incredibly harsh, that an arrow let fly from 70m away, landing a few cm off target, ended dreams of glory but those are the margins at the highest level. Over the next six shots, for instance, South Korea's Kim Woojin hit one nine, and five 10s. You don't beat the Koreans with an eight.
In the bronze medal playoff, India started slow against the USA and that affected them at the end. A 4-0 lead was cut to 4-2 when Bhakat and Bommadevara hit a 10 and a 9 each but the USA, led by Brady Ellison (former world no.1 and multiple Olympic medalist), held their nerve even as India's frayed. Two eights from Bhakat were shots India could never have recovered from, not in an Olympic bronze medal match.
The point, though, is that they were there. The two Indians were making their Olympic debut and though the pressure told at the end, they were there fighting for medals at the end of it all: this a fourth that ought not be scoffed at. The nation certainly doesn't have the archery pedigree to do that.
Their individual stories too ought to warm hearts. Bhakat is a left-armer, a rarity in the country, didn't have a bow of her own till after 2018, because it was too expensive a piece of equipment. In Paris, she finished the qualifiers in 11th. Bommadevara may have won a team silver at the 2023 Asiad but was the subject of great ridicule when an arrow he shot in that tournament missed the target entirely and got stuck to the frame.
To rise from that has taken great mental strength, and his shooting was exemplary throughout here. In fact, he finished the individual qualifiers in fourth, and it took a heartbreaking shootoff to eliminate him in the individual pre-quarterfinals. The cruelty of the margins at this elite level brutally exposed by the 2.4cm extra distance his arrow was from dead centre than his opponent's.
This ends the duo's participation in Paris, but there are two Indians left in the fray - veteran Deepika Kumari and debutant Bhajan Kaur in the women's round-of-16 (that's on Saturday). What Bommadevara and Bhakat have done is show them - and future generations -- that they can do more, that they can compete, that even if fourth is as heartbreaking a position as they came, medals can be fought for.
Whatever happens from now, Indian archery will at least have that to remember Paris by.