On Sunday, a historic record was created for India in world archery by a 24-year-old athlete, Dhiraj Bommadevara. He defeated his arch-nemesis South Korea twice to win a double gold haul at the Archery World Cup Stage 3. The first was in the recurve mixed team event alongside 17-year-old Kumkum Mohod and the second was individually against Paris Olympics bronze medallist Lee Woo Seok.
For Bommadevara, the feat had been a long time coming. Two years ago, he had walked away from Paris heartbroken after narrowly missing what would have been India's first Olympic archery medal. Leading 2-0 in the recurve mixed team semifinal alongside Ankita Bhakat, Dhiraj watched the match slip away against South Korea's Kim Woojin and Lim Sihyeon. This year, he won two golds for the country, a feat it had never achieved at the World Cup stage.
Inspiration from an Industrialist
Today, an Indian industrialist has chosen Dhiraj Bommadevara as his Monday Motivation that people who work hard, are often able to achieve whatever they set their minds to. Taking to X, Mahindra noted that before the double gold, Bommadevara had four career World Cup bronzes. "It would have been so easy for him to believe that life was telling him that he was not ever meant to be in the top position," he wrote. However, Mahindra said that Bommadevara defeated his real enemy, "self-doubt."
"The message I took away? If you're currently stuck in a 'bronze' phase of your journey, keep pulling at the bow. Your gold is coming," he wrote. Many in the comments appreciated Mahindra's views and source of motivation. "WOW. .... I mean that is inspiration nd self belief rolled in one. Thanks for this thought Sir. Blew my mind off," wrote a user. "What a powerful message, sir! Gold is indeed coming for those who refuse to quit. Proud of Dhiraj" added another.
Dhiraj's Story
For Dhiraj, the win was more than just a triumph at the global level, it was personal. It was the reward of his father's unusual decision to become an archery judge to support him and his mother's sacrifice of selling her own mangalsutra to keep his dream running. He was born in Sikkim, where his father Shrawan Kumar was working with the first woman Speaker of the Sikkim Legislative Assembly Kalawati Subba. Soon, the family moved to their native Royyuru near Vijaywada.
Unable to find stable employment, Shrawan and his wife Revathy started a small school, Marigold Public School around 2005-06 in Krishna Lanka. "All private schools were charging Rs 50,000 to 1 lakh in donations so we thought of having our own school and took it up as a challenge," they shared. Initially, the school had barely 15 students and one of them was their own son, Dhiraj. They were charging just Rs 25 per month as fees, earning a modest income.
However, sports still remained a passion for Shrawan, whose own father had served in the paramilitary forces in Sikkim. Thus, he often took a young Dhiraj to the nearby Indira Gandhi Municipal Corporation Stadium, and introduced him to badminton, football, tennis and cricket. In these games, he showed no interest. However, when he saw some archers practising nearby, he kept watching them for three or four months. Eventually, Shrawan enrolled his son on the Volga Archery Academy run by Satyanarayana.
With the academy hesitant to enrol a young child, he assured: "I told them, 'It's my responsibility. He will listen and follow instructions. Just give him a chance." As Dhiraj learnt the sport, Shrawan realised he too needed to understand it better to help out his son. Thus, he cleared the Archery Association of India's judges' examination in 2008, becoming Andhra Pradesh's senior archery judge.
In 2017, when Dhiraj needed imported equipment to continue his training and the family could not afford it, his mother sold her mangalsutra to secure a loan so that her son could buy a bow. "There was a time in 2017 when I was almost ready to give up archery because we couldn't afford the equipment," Dhiraj recalled after his double gold feat. "My mother mortgaged her mangalsutra so that I could buy a bow. I loved archery so much, and my parents trusted me completely and took that loan. For a middle-class family, that's a very big thing. Today, archery is giving all of that back to my parents."
