Mumbai, Sep 7 (IANS) Having won a medal at each of her three previous appearances in the Continental Games, star compound archer Jyothi Surekha Vennam will be going into the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya in Japan with a lot of confidence and a different set of challenges.
It will be her fourth consecutive Asian Games, which brings familiar territory in some ways and a new challenge in others. The 30-year-old compound archer, who has won three gold, one silver and one bronze medal in Asian Games so far, will now be part of a new Indian women’s team still finding its rhythm together.
With the Games as the priority this year, Jyothi’s preparation has centred on getting every detail right, both with her equipment and herself. “We are working really hard, preparing ourselves, making sure that everything is good, whether it’s our equipment or ourselves, and working towards it,” she said.
Archery may not appear as physically strenuous as some other sports, but the demands of the sport extend well beyond the physical. For Jyothi, the challenge becomes clearer once someone actually picks up the equipment, where technique, control, and mental strength come together to execute a shot.
“Not only archery, like any sport, when someone is playing, it seems really easy, and we can also just do it. But it’s not the case; like every sport has its own things, like some techniques and all. That’s what I believe. And once you start training or once you start, you know, using the equipment and all, then you get to know like how hard it is,” she explained.
For an archer heading into her fourth Asian Games, that mental strength also means not getting weighed down by what has come before. Despite winning a medal at every Asian Games she has competed in, Jyothi says her focus remains on the performance in events ahead. “Right now I’m just focused on giving my best at the games rather than thinking about any other things.”
For Jyothi, the women’s team brings a new dynamic this time around. The squad has already had two opportunities to compete together at the World Cup stages, and those outings have helped the athletes get used to one another and build confidence as a team.
“Coming to the team, it’s a new team for us because this is the first time that we got to play as a team, especially for the women’s team, I would like to say. And we have participated in World Cup stages three and four because, for us, the game selection trials were completed in May, and we got two tournaments to participate in before the Asian Games. We are improving, we are working hard, and we are getting used to each other. And it’s just that no matter what the situation is, we are there for each other,” she added.
While Jyothi is one of the senior members of the squad, she sees experience as something shared across the team rather than a responsibility resting on one athlete.
“I think all the team members are really experienced, I would say, in some sort of things because there’s no one who is representing India in the games for the very first time. Like it’s their first international tournament. They have been part of many international tournaments in previous years and this year too,” she said.
Her journey has also been shaped by being part of the Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS) ecosystem, where she has trained alongside and shared the high-performance environment with fellow Indian archers including Rishabh Yadav and Abhishek Verma. Being around athletes competing at the highest level has also meant having an environment where experiences, learnings, and perspectives are constantly shared.
With three Asian Games medals already behind her, Jyothi says staying motivated comes from continually resetting her goals based on the importance of each tournament. This year, there is no ambiguity about the priority.
“I think the main thing would be just reframing your goals now and then, depending upon what tournaments you’re playing and which tournament you give the most importance to. This year we only had the Asian Games, which is having the utmost priority. The World Cups happen every year for us. This year it’s Asian Games,” she said.
As Jyothi heads into her fourth Asian Games, the challenge is therefore not about carrying the weight of three previous medals, but about approaching a new competition with the same focus, while growing alongside a new-look Indian women’s team. With the Asian Games firmly at the top of her priorities, she now turns her attention to putting that preparation into practice on the competition field.
–IANS
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