Call it destiny or luck, but Atanu Das is the lone man standing for India in archery.
Like in the 2008 Beijing Games, Indian men's archery team failed to qualify this time as well. But Mangal Singh Champia was successful in booking a berth for India in the individual event. However, unlike eight years ago, Champia lost out to Das in the selection trials this time around.
Das is from the Tata Archery Academy (TAA) in Jamshedpur, where he has been training alongside Deepika Kumari and Laxmi Rani Majhi. While Deepika and Majhi knew about their Olympic participation much in advance, Das emerged as the dark horse in the trials held by the Archery Association of India (AAI). The 24-year-old edged past Champia and Jayanta Talukdar to become the sole male archer to represent India in Rio.
The Kolkata-based Das is currently the brightest talent and probably India's best bet for an individual Olympic medal at the Olympics. Ask anyone in AAI and they will tell you how Das has emerged as a champion archer over last one year.
After struggling for almost the entire 2015, Das came back with a bang this year with a change in equipment. He grabbed two medals – a bronze each in men's recurve team and the mixed team events – at the first leg of the World Cup in Shanghai. At the Antalya leg later, he outshone all the Indian archers with his solid performance, bagging a silver in the mixed recurve team with his solid performances.
He even led the World No. 1 Kim Woojin for nearly half of the bronze medal play-off battle before losing in the shoot-off. That's the primary reason of Das jumping around 30 places in the world ranking to reach No. 22.
