Kumkum Mohod’s shoot-off 10 makes Indian archery history

One arrow decided it. At Okazaki Chuo Sogo Park on Saturday, Korea’s Oh Yejin — a former world youth champion, world No. 41 — stepped up first in the shoot-off and put an eight on the target 70 metres away. India’s Kumkum Anil Mohod, 17 and ranked 51st in the world, drew, held the fletching at her chin, and found the X. The set score locked at 6-5. For the first time, an Indian had won Asian Games gold in individual recurve.

She had already dug twice to get there. Oh took the opener 29-27 and led 3-1 after a tied second set. Mohod answered with a perfect 30 to level at 3-3, then slipped into the red in the fourth and trailed 3-5 with one end left. Another perfect 30 — three arrows almost on top of each other in the yellow — forced the shoot-off. Indian recurve had reached this far before without the gold; Tarundeep Rai’s silver in Guangzhou in 2010 was still the country’s best individual recurve medal at these Games. No Indian woman had even made the individual final. Mohod closed both gaps in an afternoon.

The path was not a soft draw. In the quarterfinals she beat Korea’s Kang Chaeyoung — the reigning individual world champion, a Tokyo Olympic team gold medallist, and the archer Mohod has called a role model — 6-4. In the semifinals she beat China’s Zhu Jingyi, the world No. 3, 6-2. Afterward she shrugged off the Korean reputation that hangs over every recurve field. “Everyone talks about Korea,” she told ANI. “But I never look at who is playing in front of me. I just have to complete my process… and just enjoy that moment by staying in the present. That’s exactly what I did today.”

She had also prepared for the ending before she left home. “I came prepared for shoot-off,” she said. “Before coming here I used to visualise that if I face a shoot-off I will hit X and I did that.” When the gold landed, the celebration looked smaller than the history. The Indian bench was on its feet; Sportstar reported that national coach Udham Singh had to tell Mohod to raise her arms and hold the tricolour. She stood with the bow lowered, sheepish, as if she still needed instructions for the part that comes after the arrow.

A day earlier she had already made team history. With Ankita Bhakat and Kirti Sharma she beat Korea 5-3 for India’s first women’s recurve team gold at the Asian Games, ending a Korean streak seven titles deep. Mohod shot third — the toughest spot, because you see what still needs doing — and put a 10 on the last arrow that kept India alive before a scoring review sealed it. The mixed team with Dhiraj Bommadevara brought silver. Three medals on a debut Games. Korea’s recurve women left Japan without a gold for the first time in the 48-year history of archery at the continental meet.

Back in Amravati, Maharashtra, her father had already written the instruction. After Friday’s medals, Mohod sent Anil Mohod a photo. His reply, reported by the Times of India, was blunt: “There is a medal missing in this photo.” Anil makes cardboard boxes for sweet shops. The family once funded a wooden bow with money from her grandmother, then kept a second-hand recurve in her hands for years while he drove her to Khelo India sessions on a motorcycle. On Saturday morning he watched the individual final on television. The missing medal arrived.

The bow story was already public before Okazaki. In May, at World Cup Stage 2 in Shanghai, Mohod shot a women’s team gold with Deepika Kumari and Ankita Bhakat on that same five-year-old second-hand recurve — India’s first women’s recurve World Cup team title since 2021. Anil called an old sweet-shop client to order boxes, not deliver them. “It is the sweet boxes that run our home, and so does Kumkum’s archery,” he told the Indian Express then. She likes butterscotch ice cream and maths. For Games week she put both aside.

She almost missed the team altogether. At the Asian Games trials in Sonepat she topped qualification, won six matches in the second stage, and finished second behind Kirti Sharma. Four-time Olympian Deepika Kumari, still the face of Indian recurve for a generation of juniors, finished fourth and stayed home. Mohod has said the younger group idolises Deepika and does not think in terms of edging anyone out. The board thought in scores. The teenager who made her senior international debut only in 2025 walked into Japan on a team Deepika did not make, then spent Saturday beating two of the Koreans who still define the sport.

Coach Prafull Dange, who started her at Radhey Archery Academy in Amravati after Holi in 2018, watched the final from home and had been clear for years about what counted. Team golds are welcome, he told India Today, but the individual medal is the real test because the game is individual. After Friday’s team win she told him, in Marathi, that she would perform grandly on the podium. On Saturday he finally got to call her champion. He still has to argue with her parents not to send her on Sundays. She would rather shoot.

The Olympic ticket comes with the gold, and it does not put her on the plane by itself. Finalists in women’s individual recurve at these Games each earn their National Olympic Committee a quota place for Los Angeles 2028. India now has that women’s spot; the Indian Olympic Association still chooses who wears the jersey, and trials will decide whether Mohod’s name is on it. She will still be a junior then. Korean reporters asked her about Los Angeles anyway. “I’ve visualised I’m going to win the gold in Los Angeles,” she said. Her WhatsApp display picture, Indian Express reported earlier, is a sketch with a line she wrote herself: the Olympics are the target and the dream.

India matched its Hangzhou archery haul in Japan — nine medals across compound and recurve — and now owns a women’s individual LA28 place that used to feel theoretical. Mohod still has to win the domestic fight for that seat and turn one debut week into a full cycle. For one Saturday in Okazaki, her father’s missing medal was enough: Korea’s eight, her X, and the first Indian name on the Asian Games individual recurve gold list.