Once deemed too skinny to lift a bow, Kirti helps Indian archers topple a colossus at Asian Games - The Indian Express

A decade ago, when archery coach Udham Singh visited the village of Ritauli near Jind in Haryana to select kids for his archery academy, Kirti Sharma was one of the kids who was interested. But the coach wasn’t. She was too thin, lacking in power needed to pull the bow string in archery. Back then, she would go a whole day on only a single glass of milk and would refuse to eat anything else. But three years later in 2019, when the same set of coaches went to the village again, Kirti got her second chance.

The 19-year-old Kirti converted that second chance into a history-making recurve archery gold medal at the Asian Games on Friday. The Indian troika of Kirti, Kumkum Mohod and Ankita Bhakat brought down an archery Goliath in the gold medal match. They defeated the South Korean women’s team that rarely ever gets introduced to defeat.

It was India’s first ever gold at the Asian Games with the complex recurve bow. The Indian team was deadlocked at 2-2 after the second set, before they won the fourth and tied the fifth to win the title 5-2 at the Okazaki Central Park Multipurpose Square in Japan.

The Koreans had in their midst, Tokyo Olympics team gold medallist and reigning world champion Kang Chae-young, Oh Ye-jin and Lee Yunji. The South Korean women are a juggernaut in the women’s archery team event in particular. At the Paris 2024 Olympics, they won their 10th consecutive women’s team gold at the Olympics, a record that stretches back to Seoul 1988.

A girl who was once too skinny to even lift a bow, had pulled down a colossus.

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“Kirti was very thin and would only have a single glass of milk during the whole day. She would not like to eat and sometimes we were worried. When she was rejected by the coaches initially due to her thin body, she was not dejected. She understood it and later she was selected. Archery took her to the academy in Jharkhand and now see our girl has won the Asian Games gold so far away in Japan,” Kirti’s father Vijay told The Indian Express. He had taken a loan from the local commission agent to get Kirti a second-hand bow worth Rs 60,000 with the archer training at the academy followed by her selection in SAI centre at Hazaribagh in Jharkhand in 2022.

Kirti meanwhile, added: “Food wasn’t a problem as per normal standards. But I used to eat less than what a sportswoman requires. I was always lean, so I had to change my diet.

“People might’ve talked about me being lean but my parents never told me of it. But yes, people would question why my parents were sending a girl so far away to train in Jharkhand and wasting money on a girl.”

Even after she got into the sport at the academy, there was a lot of work that had to be done to get her into competition shape and make up for the initial deficit.

“Initially I had rejected Kirti due to her thin body frame,” coach Udham Singh had told this daily earlier. “But some years later, when we visited the village again, we selected her. We had to work a lot on her strength and to make her body in alignment with the bow motion. We also worked on her bow arm strength as well as stability with dry practice with the bow initially. When Kirti was selected for the SAI centre in Hazaribagh, where I was the coach, the team worked with nutritionists to help her gain shoulder muscle power,” he added.

Kirti said: “I worked a lot on technique of shoulder positioning. My shoulder was very weak. I always watched videos of Dhiraj (Bommadevara( bhaiyya. We don’t have the same technique, but I am a fan of his technique of arrow release and shoulder stability.

“I have worked on my shooting form. I wasn’t consistent in my release in the first pull.”

On Friday, it was not just the mighty Koreans that the Indians were grappling with, The wind grew treacherous in the morning at the archery ranges. But nothing would come in the way of the history-makers.

Nitin Sharma is an Assistant Editor with the sports team of The Indian Express. Based out of Chandigarh, Nitin works with the print sports desk while also breaking news stories for the online sports team. A Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award recipient for the year 2017 for his story ‘Harmans of Moga’, Nitin has also been a three-time recipient of the UNFPA-supported Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity for the years 2022, 2023 and 2024 respectively. His latest Laadli Award, in November 2025, came for an article on Deepthi Jeevanji, who won India’s first gold medal at the World Athletics Para Championship and was taunted for her unusual features as a child. Nitin mainly covers Olympics sports disciplines with his main interests in shooting, boxing, wrestling, athletics and much more. The last 17 years with The Indian Express has seen him unearthing stories across India from as far as Andaman and Nicobar to the North East. Nitin also covers cricket apart from women’s cricket with a keen interest. Nitin has covered events like the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the 2011 ODI World Cup, 2016 T20 World Cup and the 2017 AIBA World Youth Boxing Championships. An alumnus of School of Communication Studies, Panjab University, from where he completed his Masters in Mass Communications degree, Nitin has been an avid quizzer too. A Guru Nanak Dev University Colour holder, Nitin’s interest in quizzing began in the town of Talwara Township, a small town near the Punjab-Himachal Pradesh border. When not reporting, Nitin's interests lie in discovering new treks in the mountains or spending time near the river Beas at his hometown. ... Read More