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Kumari tops trials as India names team headed for 2024 Olympics

18 March 2024

Sonipat, India

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Deepika Kumari at Indian trials in 2024.

Former world number one Deepika Kumari returns to an Indian team in need of leadership in 2024, with limited opportunities to ensure the squad qualifies for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

The 29-year-old missed out on last year’s team having become a mother at the end of 2023. She enters this critical season as India’s top performer in the recurve women’s line-up during the selection process and will be joined on the squad by Bhajan Kaur, Ankita Bhakat and former under-18 world champion Komalika Bari.

Dhiraj Bommadevara, three-time Olympian Tarundeep Rai, Pravin Jadhav and Mrinal Chauhan comprise the men’s line-up.

Bommadevara secured India’s only Olympic quota place (of a maximum of six) so far when he won the Asian continental qualifier in November 2023.

To qualify full team quotas to Paris 2024, the Indian teams must finish in the top three (men) or top four (women) at the final selection event in Antalya in June – or be among the top two unqualified teams in the Sanlida World Archery Rankings following that event.

Both teams are in strong positions.

India’s recurve men are currently ranked third in the world, behind one qualified (Korea) and one unqualified (China) squad, while the recurve women sit eighth – but four of the seven countries above them already have slots. Deep runs at stages of the upcoming Hyundai Archery World Cup circuit, which offer considerable world ranking points, will help considerably.

“The squad is provisional and we may make one or two alterations based on their performance in the first two stages of the World Cup,” performance director Sanjeeva Singh told PTI.

India is expected to compete at the first stage of the 2024 Hyundai Archery World Cup in Shanghai in April.