Dhiraj Bommadevara: From almost quitting to World Cup glory

Every athlete has their own adventures and challenges that define their legacy, no matter how well known or influential they are in their sport.

But reflecting on the highs and lows of an incredible sporting career usually comes when that person has retired, or at the very least is nearing the end.

Dhiraj Bommadevara is only 25 years old, however, and already his story – his road to Saltillo 2026, where he became India’s first recurve men’s Hyundai Archery World Cup Champion – is remarkable for the fact that he simply kept going, let alone went on to win one of the sport’s greatest prizes.

Continuing because there was a period when shooting seemed all but lost.

In 2017, disaster struck just before he trialled to get into India’s national team for the World Archery Youth Championships in Rosario.

At his academy, three archers shared just two dozen arrows between them. Then, two days before the trials, the target fell while Dhiraj was shooting, breaking five of his eight arrows.

He was left with three.

“I just went to the bow storage room and there were a lot of old arrows scrambled around,” said the gold medallist from Antalya 2026. “I just took every arrow which was a good length for me; some ACEs, some Easton X10s, so I just made eight arrows and went to trials.”

The name of the game in archery is consistency, from your technique all the way through to your equipment, and having a mixture of arrows is far from ideal for any archer, especially when they are trying to make their respective international team.

Dhiraj nailed it, though – as he did against Berkim Tumer, Jean-Charles Valladont and Junya Nakanishi on Sunday in Saltillo.

Dhiraj finished top of the recurve under-18 qualification, 30 points ahead of the second seed, and can still remember scoring 118 points in his first two ends of the session – 30, 29, 30, 29.

Again, he was doing this all with arrows he had assorted randomly just a couple of days earlier.

Despite his incredible best efforts, however, Dhiraj lost a painful shoot-off in a match that would have secured his spot as one of the four archers to go to Rosario.

The emotional crash that followed gave him serious doubts about whether to continue.

His parents were unemployed at the time, with his father having resigned as a teacher in 2012 due to health issues. They were already struggling financially, and although they had recently bought Dhiraj a brand new WIAWIS Nanomax bow, they could no longer afford to keep supporting his archery.

“I thought it was my last year of archery and that I was just going to quit after,” he said. “Coming back home, my father told me, ‘It’s up to you because we don’t have anything to support you. We gave everything.’”

That was the moment when a teenager who had dreamed of representing India began thinking about leaving the sport behind.

“Also, I’m thinking it’s a lot for them and I’m thinking to shift my focus to studies and everything like that.”

It is hard to think this now, but Dhiraj was right on the verge of leaving the sport for good. The troubles life had thrown at him seemed to have crushed his dreams of representing India.

In those very same trials, though, a certain Kim Hag Yong was quietly watching.

Hag Yong was a coach for Olympic Gold Quest, a non-profit organisation in India that prioritises training and sponsorship for athletes trying to compete and win at the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Dhiraj may not have booked himself onto the India team for Rosario that day, but something about him stood out to Hag Yong – something he could not ignore.

So much so that he invited him to train at the Olympic Gold Quest base for archers at the Army Sports Institute in Pune, over 800 kilometres west of his hometown of Vijayawada.

It was a surprising golden ticket for Dhiraj. Olympic Gold Quest usually provides its scholarships to athletes who have already won at least one international medal, .yet Hag Yong saw enough in the teenager to make an exception.

“He really liked my technique, my shooting, and also he saw how I’m shooting with all different arrows,” Dhiraj recalled. “I hadn’t shot once for my country yet, and they said, ‘Coach Kim really liked you, he wants to train you for the Olympics’.”

The opportunity would provide Dhiraj with a monthly sponsorship of 15,000 rupees – around 150 US dollars at the time – as well as covering his expenses and equipment.

For a family struggling with debt, it changed everything.

“I just thought it’s a really great deal for me because if I go to Pune there is no expenses for me, so all the 15,000 I can earn, I can give it to my family so that my family can recover slowly because at that time we also had some debt,” he said.

Then came the simplest explanation of why he went.

“Throughout my life, archery is the only thing I have, so I thought let’s just get to Pune to train with coach Kim and train there.”

Finding himself in a programme specifically dedicated to developing athletes for India, one that paid for expenses including equipment, was surreal, considering Dhiraj had not long been using a random assortment of arrows found in a storage room.

“The first time I went to Olympic Gold Quest, I got Easton arrows, one full dozen, just for me. New bow, new equipment, and it was a dream.”

The reality of it all was almost too much for the teenager to take in.

“Literally for two days I just kept my equipment beside my bed and in the night when I was sleeping I’d wake up, thinking, ‘It’s real!’” he said.

The opportunity did more than give Dhiraj the equipment he needed to progress. With his expenses covered and a monthly sponsorship, he was also able to help his family slowly recover from the debts that had weighed on them.

Dhiraj’s progress under Hag Yong was stalled in 2020 due to the pandemic, but he still qualified for his maiden Games in Paris without his mentor.

They kept in regular contact, though, and Hag Yong’s influence was not lost on Dhiraj. Shortly after Paris, he asked Olympic Gold Quest if he could return to India and reunite with his coach.

“I said, ‘Coach, I need your help for LA28 and I need you. I don’t know what will happen in LA. But I really want to make sure in my training that I’m giving it everything.’”

Hag Yong and Dhiraj were reunited in February 2025 and still train together in Pune to this day, just as they did when they first met in 2017.

“He’s the main backbone for which I’m here. He is the one who sees a world champion in me and the one who believes everything.”

Hag Yong’s contribution to Dhiraj’s career, therefore, is impossible to overstate.

But while Dhiraj may lay much of the credit at his coach’s feet, had he not been the brave, determined 16-year-old from Andhra Pradesh who backed himself in those trials, even when it seemed impossible, Hag Yong would never have encountered him.

Many, especially at that age, would never have trusted themselves at such a disadvantage. But this is how you find the cream of the crop – when the going gets tough.

It really was a sliding-doors moment. Yet it is Dhiraj and his family who have since shaped his stellar career through their love of archery and sheer grit.

Saltillo was celebrated as the host of the 20th Archery World Cup Final at Thursday night’s colourful draw, and on Sunday Dhiraj was poetically celebrating 20 years of the sport that has taken him from the brink of quitting to becoming a World Cup champion.

“I just feel like I’m living in the dream because… it was really hard,” said Dhiraj, whose next stop is the 20th Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya. “The place where I came from and winning gold in the World Cup stage [in Antalya], it’s really hard to imagine for anyone from back in my country.”

You can watch back all of Dhiraj’s matches from Saltillo on archery+.