Deepika Kumari, is the current no.1 ranked Archer in the world in women's archery. She was born on June 13th, 1994 at Ranchi, Bihar. Her father Shivnarayan Mahato, is an auto rickshaw driver and mother Geeta, is a nurse at Ranchi Medical College. Like every other child, she also started aiming for mangoes using stones and that led to her interest in archery.
Career:
Deepika Kumari, even though interested in Archery, was struggling to get proper training and equipment because of her family conditions. Vidya Kumari, Deepika's cousin, helped her join Tata Archery Academy in 2006 and helped her develop her talent. And from there her professional Archery career started and within three years she won the Cadet World Championship in 2009. The following year, she participated in Commonwealth games and bagged gold medals in Recurve Individual and Team events. Deepika Kumari qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics and finished in eighth place in the team event. The same year, she was conferred the Arjuna Award. She got silver in the world championship in 2011 and 2015 in the team event. Deepika was also a key player in Asian Championship and has won gold once, silver twice and bronze thrice over the years in her career.
In May 2012, Deepika Kumari won her first gold medal in world cup individual recurve event. In the same year, she took part in the London Olympics but could not give her best performance attributing to fever and high winds. In 2013 as well she won gold in archery World Cup at Colombia. In 2014 at the age of 20 she was featured in 30 under 30 by Forbes.
Deepika was part of the team qualified for 2016 Rio Olympics, but the team lost in the quarterfinals against Russia and finished 7th in the ranking round of 16 selected teams. But Deepika has shown exceptional performance in individual events, but lost in rounds of 16 in the 64 round event. Recently in 2021, she won 3 gold medals in archery World Cup in Paris.
Deepika is awarded with Padma Shri, highest civilian award in India in 2016. She is also a proud recipient of FICCI sports person of the year 2014. She got married to Archer Atanu Das in 2020. Currently Team India womens including Deepika Kumari, is participating in world cup stage 3 and has stormed into finals by beating Top seeded South Korea, even after not having a very good start to the tournament. Currently they are expected to win gold in this stage and let's hope for the best.
Deepika Kumari is one of the best archers of the world and is yet to achieve her peak in the career. She is a inspiration to take up sports to many women around the world. She is future star for India and yet to win many medals and tournaments in the upcoming years.
