Flydon

Kumkum Mohod and the 2 days Indian archery will never forget. 7x in a row. Since 1998, South Korea had won every women's team recurve gold at the Asian Games. On 2 October 2026, they were shooting for an 8th. Standing in the way was a 17 year old from Amravati, whose first bow had cost about ₹3,000. Recurve is the Olympic style bow, the one whose limbs curve away from the archer at the tips. At the Games, archers shoot it at a target 70 metres away. The ten ring, dead centre, is about 12 cms wide. Now imagine hitting that, with the whole country watching. Kumkum Anil Mohod was born on 10 March 2009. In 2018, she was still a schoolgirl, not yet 10, when her mother, Rupali, saw a relative's daughter practising at an archery academy in Amravati, run by coach Prafull Dange. She thought Kumkum should try it. The 1st bow was a wooden Indian bow. Her father calls it a bamboo bow. It was paid for with money her grandmother gave her. 6 months later, she won a silver medal at the sub-junior nationals. Her father, Anil Manohar Mohod, makes cardboard boxes for sweet shops in Amravati. As the training costs grew, even the shared auto to the academy became too much. So he took her on his motorcycle. A 2nd hand bow carried her for years. Later, the family bought a recurve bow from savings built up over time. She made her international debut in 2025. At the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, India's women's recurve team of Kumkum, Ankita Bhakat and Kirti Sharma reached the gold medal match. India had never made that final before. Ankita had been on the team that won bronze at Hangzhou. The last set went to the wire. Korea finished on 54. India had to match it. Kirti's arrow was first called an 8, and a review upgraded it to a 9. Then came Kumkum's last arrow. It was a ten. The set was tied. India beat South Korea 5-3, the first women's recurve team gold in the country's history. The same day, she and Dhiraj Bommadevara took silver in the mixed team event. The next morning Today, she was back at the line. She beat Korea's Kang Chaeyoung, the reigning world champion, 6-4 in the quarterfinal. In the semifinal against China's Zhu Jingyi, the 2025 World Championships silver medallist, Zhu's last arrow was a 9. Kumkum needed a 10 to win. She shot a 10, and won 6-2. In the final, she faced another Korean, Oh Yejin. It went to 5-5, and to a shoot-off, one arrow each. Oh shot an 8. Kumkum shot a 10. She became the 1st Indian woman to win an individual recurve medal at an Asian Games, and it was gold. India's only earlier individual recurve medal at the Games was a silver, won by Tarundeep Rai in 2010. Her run to the final also earned India a country quota place for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles. In two days, she had beaten Korea's team and two of Korea's archers. Her father says her biggest dream is still ahead: the Olympics. A man who makes boxes for other people's sweets. A grandmother's savings. A motorcycle that carried a little girl and her bow to practice. A bow made of bamboo. And a girl who, when a semifinal needed a 10, shot one, and when gold came down to a single arrow, shot another. Pic Courtesy: OlympicKhel