Archer Kumkum Mohod. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Kumkum Mohod speaks little, smiles a lot more. When she does talk, though, the clarity of thoughts and the simplicity of her process are disarming. The smile is replaced by a single-minded focus in competition.
“Khud pe bhaorsa tha, team ka support tha,” she said after becoming the first Indian ever to win an individual Asian Games gold in recurve archery. “The mindset was very different today, I was very confident that I can do this. Excited also because this is my first Asian Games individual competition but the only thought before shooting was to keep faith in myself and focus on my process without bothering who I was up against,” she added.
The 17-year-old has been a revelation for the Indian contingent in Nagoya. She knows her role, she has her dreams but, most important, she knows how and what to do to achieve them. The manifestation and the way it’s turning real are almost surreal.
“I visualised a shoot-off scenario in the final and hitting the X to win it when I got selected for the Asian Games. We keep it as real as possible during training and today also when we came to the ground, I visualised shooting a 10 on every arrow and winning gold,” she added. Except that she had expected it to happen against Kang Chaeyoung, one of her two favourites in the sport. The other is senior pro Dhiraj Bommadevara, whom she considers her elder brother.
The dreams she has seen have been coming true one at a time but the big target is the Olympics.
Having started young, international success first took hold in Kumkum at the age of 10, when she first played and won at the sub-junior nationals in 202.
“I have always dreamt of winning right from childhood but the biggest of them all is the Olympics. But I never thought I would win three medals, two gold defeating Korea. The stage or age doesn’t matter, the aim is to just focus on the process and keep getting better,” she said, adding, “Score improve hone laga to sapne dekhne lagi,” eight words that may well be encapsulate the complete story of every aspiring sportsperson in the country.
Preparing for the shoot-off in the final against Oh Yejin, Kumkum admitted she had to bring herself back to the present. “While shooting, I only look at my target. Before the shoot-off, I told myself, ‘reset, don’t look at the arrow, focus on yourself and the process, the arrow will find its way to the target. It worked.”
She sent a picture of her two medals on Friday (October 2, 2026) back home and got a message, “one more gold left”.Now that that’s in and competition is over, she might just unwind watching comedy. “Hasna pasand hai,” she says softly. The youngster has brought more than a few smiles to a million faces back home already.
Published – October 03, 2026 03:05 pm IST
