 "Aditi Swami Archery")
When Parth Salunkhe and Aditi Swami became the youth world champions in Ireland last week, the drought-prone Satara in Maharashtra found its latest heroes in archery.
In just about two years time, the region has produced one Olympian (Pravin Jadhav), two youth world champions, as Maharashtra is reaping the success of the 'Har Ghar Archery' programme launched by Archery Association of India secretary general Pramod Chandurkar.
Parth and compound archer Aditi, who returned with individual and team golds, began their journey together from the same academy in Satara.
"Most of the households here talk just about archery," said secondary school English teacher Sushant Salunkhe, who is flooded with congratulatory messages after his son Parth became the first Indian male recurve archer to become world youth champion.
Seeing the success of an under-nine state-level tournament from where many were making the national team, Salunkhe senior gave archery a serious thought and wanted his son to take up the sport when he was in standard three.
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As part of the state archery programme, the sport was also introduced in his school, Shripatrao Patil High School, where Salunkhe would teach the sport.
"We would watch YouTube videos of seniors like Abhishek Verma, Atanu Das and many USA, Korean archers," Parth told PTI from Dublin.
His father became Parth's first coach before he got in touch with Pravin Sawant who had an academy in Satara.
The journey began for the little boy as he started winning, but the archer, then, needed the imported bow, which would cost Rs 2.5 lakh.
Finance was a big constraint but his father did not think twice and borrowed money from his friends and relatives.
"I was in a temporary position (in my school) then and it was a big amount for me to arrange. It was a risk, but there was no looking back seeing his dedication and discipline," Salunkhe said.
His son did not disappoint as he impressed in Khelo India 2017-18 and was picked for SAI centre in Sonipat.
Parth then came under the wings of Ram Awadhesh at SAI Sonipat.
"He was skinny but his temperament and composed demeanour impressed me the most," Awadhesh told PTI.
"He always stays in the present and is not bothered about what would happen, something that was evident when he fought back from 1-3 down to beat the Korean.
"Be it the Korean, Chinese, or Taiwanese, it does not bother him. He's only focused in his scores," he added.
This was not the first time he beat a Korean to win a medal. He also did so at the third leg of Asia Cup in Sharjah last year when he defeated Minseung Kang to win a bronze on that occasion, the coach added.
Parth, an Olympic medal prospect
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Indian archery's high performance director Sanjeeva Singh feels Parth is one to watch out for at the 2024 and 2028 Olympics.
"He has slowly and steadily improved his performance from a score of 325 to 335 over the last two years," the Dronacharya Awardee, who accompanied the team at the Youth World Championships in Ireland, said from Dublin.
"He has to further improve his consistency to 340 score to compete with senior Koreans, to beat them at the Olympics."
"In the last Junior Worlds he had won team gold and mixed team gold. In the individual he was out in quarterfinal in last world Championship. This time, he not only topped the rankings round, but continued to shoot scores of 29 out of 30 to win the gold.
Maharashtra reigns supreme
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AAI secretary general Chandurkar said his home state now have five top-level archers which include Ojas Deotale (Nagpur), Prathamesh Jawkar (Bhuldhana) and the trio from Satara.
"Earlier, Jharkhand would dominate archery, now it's Maharashtra," Chandurkar said.
"Our grassroots programme, 'Har Ghar Archery', is paying dividends. The Under-9 tournament has been a success.
"We have been able to create a pipeline for Indian archers. Our recent success shows, we are no more afraid of Koreans. An Olympic medal is not far now," he concluded.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
