‘I’ve visualised this moment’: How Kumkum Mohod became India’s first Asian Games women’s recurve champion

Kumkum Mohod won gold in the women’s individual recurve archery event at the 2026 Asian Games in Nagoya. | Photo Credit: REUTERS

Seventeen-year-old Kumkum Mohod is a reluctant history maker. At the Okazaki Chuo Sogo Park Multipurpose Square, moments after she became the first Indian woman recurve archer to win an individual gold medal at the Asian Games, coach Udham Singh stood behind her, hollering and pumping his fists. In the stands, the Indian team were on their feet. Compound coach Jiwanjot Singh Teja had lost his voice. Kumkum stood with her bow lowered, looking sheepish, as if she didn’t really know what to do anymore. She had to be told by Udham to lift her arms in triumph and was instructed to hold the tricolour.

Archery, she must have felt, was a lot easier.

A few minutes earlier, in the final of the women’s recurve archery event at the Asian Games, the scores were level. With one arrow to decide the Asian Games gold medal, South Korea’s Oh Yejin, a former youth World champion, stepped over the white shooting line. She aimed at the target 70 metres in front of her. She released the shot fast, as archers in Korea are trained to do. It minimises the chance of movement and second-guessing.

The speed masks her nervousness. The shot is bad. An 8. Kumkum needs to shoot just a nine. That’s the part of the paper target that’s in yellow. She does even better. She draws, holds the fletching against her chin for a couple of seconds and releases. It’s as fast as the Korean’s. But it’s much better. Right in the centre of the target. 10. Gold.

Kumkum has gone where no Indian has gone before. Forget gold, no Indian woman had even made the individual final at the Asian Games previously. This was no luck of the draw.

In her quarterfinals, Kumkum beat the reigning World Champion Kang Chaeyoung of Korea. In the semifinal, she beat last year’s world championship (Gwangju, 2025) silver medallist Zhu Jingyi of China. And in the final, she beat Oh, who won what are considered the toughest national trials in the world, after twice coming back from a set down. The second time, down 5-3, she shot three consecutive arrows, Robin Hood-style, into the very centre of the yellow to force the decider. Then in the shoot-off she was perfect once again.

When you are shooting a projectile at a target the size of a tea saucer from some 70 metres away, you can’t see details. Both the 10 and 9 rings are in yellow. “It’s just a yellow blur. You can’t see the lines which separate the 10 ring from the 9. You know that somewhere in the middle is the ‘X’ which marks the centre,” says Indian recurve coach Sonam Rana.

Kumkum can, though. She’s been doing so for several months now.

“Ever since I’ve made it to the national team, I’ve been visualising this moment. I had visualised shooting an X, and that is exactly what happened,” she told reporters after the match.

Well, not precisely this moment. She had expected to face Kang, a shooter she considers her role model, in the final. But she knew she was going to be here and she knew she was going to win.

If there’s one thing you need to know about Kumkum, it’s that she’s supremely confident.

Outside the range, she’s your average teenager. She wears a pimple patch under her jaw. She listens to sad songs. She likes arts and crafts and loves watching Taarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashma.h She loves eating butterscotch ice cream. “She’s such a quiet girl. Doesn’t talk much. Keeps to herself. Sometimes you will be talking for some time and suddenly you find out she’s sitting there,” says compound archer Ganesh Mani Ratnam Thirumuru.

Get her to the shooting line, though, and Kumkum is transformed.

“She is a very aggressive archer. Very confident,” says coach Rana.

This confidence is not new. Still a sub-junior, she broke into the senior team earlier this year. Partnering with Dhiraj Bommadevara, she won mixed team gold at the Archery World Cup in Antalya, beating Oh and Kim Je Deok.

“She has no fear. I see the confidence with which she shoots, and I get confidence as well,” says Dhiraj, a multiple World Cup medallist and eight years Kumkum’s senior. The two partnered each other on Friday to win mixed team silver, another first for India at the Asian Games.

That confidence was on display in the women’s team event on Friday, where India stunned South Korea, the seven-time winner of this event. The youngest in the team, which also featured an Olympic semifinalist in Ankita Bhakat, Kumkum was the designated third archer. It’s considered the toughest position because, in a precision sport, it adds another variable: knowing what has been done and what needs to be done.

Kumkum thrives under that role. Unlike her teammates, who sometimes need to be given key words on technique as they draw, no one talks much when Kumkum shoots. “You don’t need to tell her anything. Everyone else has to be reminded what to do when they draw the bow. With Kumkum, when she sees she needs to shoot a 10, she will just shoot it. She has zero complications,” says Ankita, who won gold with her in the women’s team finals.

It was Kumkum who held her nerve when it mattered most, shooting a 10 with her final arrow to keep India alive. The judges then reviewed Kirti Sharma’s first arrow of the set, upgraded it from an 8 to a 9, and India had the tie and the gold.

It was the same in the individual rounds. Whenever she needed a big shot, Kumkum found one. In her quarterfinal against Kang, Kumkum was leading 5-3, but the Korean had the chance to level things up in the fourth set. Kang led 19-18 after the first couple of arrows. With her last arrow, Kumkum landed 3.5 centimetres from the absolute centre of the ring, tying the score and sealing the win.

In the semifinals, China’s Jingyi had a chance to level the match at 4-4 after the fourth set was tied 19-19 after two shots. Once again, Kumkum shot a 10 to become the first Indian woman to reach the finals.

Kumkum showed there was a human inside the archery machine in the finals. She dropped the first set as she shot an uncharacteristic 8. But she levelled it up with three perfect 10s in the third game. In the penultimate set, she once again shot in the red. The Korean was within touching distance of a win.

But it wasn’t to be.

Where others might have panicked, Kumkum kept complete control of her mind. “I told myself to reset. My focus was drifting toward the arrow, so I reminded myself to focus on my shooting form instead of the result,” she says.

The Korean shot two nines and a 10. Kumkum hit the centre three straight times. And then once more in the shoot-off.

After her role in the team win, Kumkum would have been on the Koreans’ radar. Now, after beating two of their best to win India’s first individual gold, she had their full attention.

They wanted to know everything about her. With her win, Kumkum had also secured a quota for India for the Olympics in two years’ time. She’ll still be a junior then, but the Koreans were twitchy. Was she going to be the one to break the hegemony they’d taken for granted? What were her goals for Los Angeles? They asked her.

Perhaps they should be a little worried. “I’ve visualised I’m going to win the gold in Los Angeles,” she said.

Published on Oct 03, 2026

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