Indian archers take bronze in compound team event in Essen.
A talented group of Indian student-athletes stepped onto the archery range at Zeche Zollverein, a century-old mining site, on Friday, 25 July and outperformed Great Britain 232-224 to take the Rhine-Ruhr 2025 FISU World University Games bronze medal in the women’s compound team event.
Although from different parts of India, each of their beginnings in the sport is similar.
Picking up a bow and arrow
For Madhura Dhamangaonkar, who’s pursuing a Masters of Arts in History at Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil University in Satara, her path was laid as far back as 2009. Her sister had a goal of swimming for India. As a result, Dhamangaonkar’s parents looked into different sports for Dhamangaonkar to wear her country’s flag.
“In my native city (Amravati, central India), there is one sports academy,” the 25-year-old said. “She (my mother) saw that archery was there and she thought it’s quite different to others like gymnastics and swimming. So she thought that I would represent India in that city.”
Dhamangaonkar laughed and said, “first of all my mother started and then came and passed it to me, as my responsibility.”
Avneet Kaur, a Bachelor of Arts student at Chandigarh University, has a twin sister who was the first to fire an arrow, when archery was offered in their high school.
“I didn’t have much interest in this (initially), but I followed my sister. So she joined this sport and I just followed her up and I found it interesting and pursued it.”
Trailing her twin is paying off, as Avneet has won gold medals at Archery Youth World Championships, Asian Championships and National Championships.
The third member of the FISU Games bronze-medal winning trio is Parneet Kaur. She stumbled into the sport, with a classic, gentle push from her parents.
“I started archery in 2015 when I was 10 years old. My father just wanted me to, after school, just do something like instead of just lazing around at home,” Kaur said with a smirk. “He just wanted me to do some sport, so he took me to archery and fencing, and fencing was closed that day so I chose archery.”
Having a successful FISU Games, the Punjabi University Bachelor of Arts student-athlete also picked up gold in the mixed compound team competition on Friday alongside teammate Kushal Dalal, after beating the Republic of Korea 157-154.
Real passion
Coming from separate universities, the successful trio is united by their love for archery and India.
All chiming in words, adding passion to the statement, they collectively said, “We serve the nation as a player, so it’s where the medal is dedicated to. Everything India is the beauty.”
In addition to India’s triumph in mixed compound, archery gold medallists in team events on July 25 at the FISU Games were the Republic of Korea in women’s compound, Türkiye in men’s compound, Japan in both women’s and men’s recurve, as well as the Republic of China in mixed recurve.
The Rhine-Ruhr 2025 FISU World University Games take place from 16-27 July. Watch all the competitions live on fisu.tv. Click on the link to find the full schedule.
Written by Coby Moratti, FISU Young Reporter, New Zealand
The Young Reporters Programme exemplifies FISU’s commitment to more than sports competitions. At every FISU World University Games, a group of talented aspiring sports journalists are chosen to cover the competition.
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