How Ankita Bhakat put behind shooting a 4, but still fell short of a bronze

At the receiving end of the scathing – some might say, deserved – torrent of criticism on the first Sunday of the Olympics, was a 25-year-old archer from Kolkata. Because it was early days at Paris, and a medal was still in the realms of possibility, Ankita Bhakat, only became a nameless, faceless ‘Indian archer’, for fans to lament over, as a symbol of the country’s inability to nail down medals, and mercifully wasn’t turned into a dartboard. Inexplicably, she had shot a horrendous arrow of 4 (with 10 being perfect score in Archery).

A 4 makes an archer look quite ridiculous on television, as the arrow is literally hanging off the edge of the circle, its nock-tip and feather fletching swaying ridiculously. Bhakat is one of India’s better reader of wind conditions among archers, and not easily fazed – they even call her grittiest and tough. But the wretched 4 happened. Bhakat says she had never shot anything like this before. “Ab darr lagtaa hai ki aisa bhi ho sakta hai (I was scared that this too can happen on the range),” she says, pretty scared in the aftermath.

The 4 that Bhakat misfired didn’t immediately throw her off composure, though India’s women’s team exited the quarterfinals 6-0 against the Netherlands. It was the first day of serious knockout competition, and there were a fair share of 6s and 7s from all archers over the course of the next week. Deepika Kumari copped a large share of hate for not managing perfection at her fourth Olympic – the women perennially criticised far more than men, and Bhajan Kaur who started well, couldn’t go the distance in her Individual event, fizzling out.

India’s Ankita Bhakat competes along with Dhiraj Bommadevara during the archery mixed team quarterfinal at the Paris 2024 Olympics. (FILE)

Bhakat bookended her Olympics that started with the horror 4 with a notorious 4th place finish logged alongside Dhiraj Bommadevara in the mixed team event, that drew the miserable sighs. “Finishing 4th against the USA in the mixed team was the saddest day of my life. It hurt because we came this far, but couldn’t medal,” she explains. It was India’s best finish in Archery at the Olympics though, and though Bhakat believes there’s massive scope for improvement, she says she doesn’t have the luxury to slip into a depressed funk and wallow in grief.

India’s myriad Archery disasters over the years get all blamed on “mental weakness”, a blanket term used to dub the indecipherable failures of the doomed sport — though no one quite has a handle on what exactly goes wrong each time. Governance reforms are routinely hankered for, and archers get plastered with tags of choking. But fragility isn’t what Bhakat was known for. Bhakat tries her best to recall the 4.

“We all went into the Olympics thinking we shouldn’t exit it with any regrets, that there should be no bad shot. Netherlands was the start of the Games, and I did get nervous on the podium (spot where archers shoot from) and fired a loose shot (4). I knew immediately my confidence needed to increase, and I recovered, but the 4 was there,” she says.

“It was just that atmosphere that can get daunting,” Bhakat adds. “The gallery, the audience, the noise. It was my first time shooting in front of so many people. When we compete at Nationals, there’s hardly anyone. Even at World Cups, there’s a maximum of 300-400 people.” The stunning Esplanade Invalides, a gorgeous setting to leisurely catch a spot of Olympic Archery, had appeared gargantuan to Bhakat, with its 8000 people in the audience. “You just can’t simulate that in practice,” she says sadly.

Ankita grew up in a humble home in Kolkata where her father ran a milk dairy. The bustle and brilliant architecture of her homecity couldn’t inure her to the nerves of that precise moment, though speaking to the coach helped her get better in the final mixed team event.

She and Bommadevara played Indonesia in the pre-quarterfinals. “There was fear about how I would do. But I spoke to the coaches and psychologist. I felt confident, and let the process take over, without checking scores. Performance immediately improved and we did well against Spain too to reach semifinals,” she recalls. There they would run into Archery’s finest Lim Si-hyeon and Kim Woo-jin.

One reason why Bhakat was picked over Deepika or Bhajan Kaur, despite knives being sharpened post her 4, was because she tends to be fearless against South Koreans. “With Koreans you have to be 100 percent at all times. It’s never over, because you know they will always shoot brilliantly. Zero scope for mistake. I know that process,” she explains.

She and Bommadevara did well too to take the opening set 38-36 picking the opening 2 points. Lim-Kim levelled with 38-35, and Bhakat stepped it up in the third though it went 38-37 to Koreans. Still in it at 2-4 set score down, both Bhakat and Bommadevara would finish with 10s, to put up 38 on the board. But the Koreans are World winners for a reason, and they amped it up to win 39-38, and push India into the bronze play-off. “It was our first Olympic semifinal and we followed the shooting process well and were in front. But they were better each time,” she says of the 2-6 loss. “Sometimes we hit 10s but they are in fact 9,” she says of the agonizing difference.

Ankita Bhakat in action. (FILE)

Against the Americans Brady Ellison and Casey Kaufhold, the Indians trailed 2 sets, but pulled back the third with a 38-34. Still, the next one ended 35-37, and that was that. Another 4th place to be mourned. “I had started the bronze match with a 7, but responded with a 10 in the next one. I stayed calm and wasn’t nervous by then, but we weren’t good enough,” she concedes.

Shooting with a massive bow string tension of 44, Bhakat wields one of the toughest recurve bows, needing exceptional strength. “It’s sufficient. Our equipment is also the latest. But the fear that the 4 might happen again needs to go. Me and Dhiraj kept talking and he said ‘it’s OK, happens’. But I’ll have to learn the lesson. Even one 4 hurts,” she says, keen to never lapse into that nervousness as they resume competition next year.

“We really need to replicate that atmosphere at our Nationals,” she adds. Perhaps those who clucked at her 4, and scribbled their thoughts, might want to land up at the Nationals and make up the 8000 needed to familiarize archers to the pressure cooker situations.

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