For an athlete of few words who lets her prowess on the archery range do the talking, Jyothi Surekha Vennam’s Compound bow spoke most eloquently in 2023. From the time she scored a world-record 1418 points over two days of open selection trials in Kolkata in January to when she won three gold medals at the Asian Games, the 27-year-old made this her most expressive year.
A bronze in the World Championships in Berlin, a gold in the World Cup Stage 1 in Antalya and silver medals at the Asian Championships in Bangkok and Taipei Open, along with team gold in the World Championships and five team gold medals in the World Cup competitions through the year, easily include her in any discussion regarding the Indian Sportswoman of the Year award.
It was the year in which she twice beat Sara Lopez, the formidable Colombian regarded as the best-ever women’s Compound archer. Jyothi won their first meeting by a 149-146 margin in the title clash on the way to her maiden World Cup title in Antalya, and then prevailed in a tie-break in the bronze medal play-off at the World Cup Stage 4 in Paris.
The world No. 3 may pick the arrow in the shoot-off with Lopez in Paris as the single most important from among the hundreds that she shot in 2023. Up against the 2021 Champion and seven-time winner of the World Cup final, she knew she had to hit a 10+ plus to stand a chance of winning the bronze medal. She held her nerve and found the centre of the target.
Jyothi may look back at the World Championships semi-final against teenager Aditi Swami with some disappointment. The senior Indian looked in great nick, being one of the two to post 700-plus in qualification and backing it up with three victories to be the favourite to win the semi-final. But Aditi hit 10s with each of her last nine arrows, while Jyothi dropped four points.
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However, the engineering management graduate showed a remarkable ability to overcome that disappointment with 15 10s in the bronze medal play-off against Turkey’s Ipek Tomruk. That near-perfect performance, with 10 arrows in the 10+ zone, could rate among the best examples of holding one’s nerve by an Indian archer in the wake of stress caused by losing an important match.
Her razor-sharp focus was to do well in the Asian Games a couple of months later. She was the only non-Korean archer across eight events to top the qualifying rounds, being the only one in the women’s Compound competition to score more than 704. She backed that up with impeccable shooting to remain undefeated in the three events she competed in, including two team events.
Her family is confident that she will finish the year with news of her being nominated for the Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna. With no official word on the selection yet, her family hopes that reports of her being overlooked are exaggerated and that the Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports will eventually announce her name alongside those of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty.
To be sure, her career spanning 16 years has been punctuated as much by disappointment as by satisfaction. Her running battle with the powers-that-be in the Andhra Pradesh Archery Association has not found much resonance in national media. Small wonder, her journey has not been the smoothest, expending energy in securing a berth in each squad that leaves Indian shores.
As she winds down for the year and prepares for another – one in which she has no chance of competing in the world’s biggest sporting spectacle, the Olympic Games – she would love to extend her form and consistency. Of course, as an athlete of few words, Jyothi will always let her bow speak for her. Eloquently.
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