Asian Games 2023: Indian sensation Jyothi Surekha Vennam broke the news headlines when she clinched not one or two but three Gold medals at the Hangzhou Asian Games 2023. The Indian archer won Gold medals in all three events she participated in - the women's compound individual, women's team and mixed team as archery contributed bringing laurels to the nation. She completed the trinity with yellow metal in the women's individual event after beating Chaewon So 149-145.
Who is Jyothi Surekha?
Jyothi Surekha Vennam is a 27-year-old Arjuna Award-winning archer born in Andhra Pradesh's Vijaywada. She is the world no.4 archer in the compound category. Jyothi created history when she became the first female Indian to win a medal at the World Cup. She clinched Silver in 2022 in Paris to achieve the feat.
The star archer is also the Gold medallist in the Archery World Cup 2023 Stage 1 in Antalya as she bagged Gold medals in the individual and mixed team events. She was part of another historical feat when Jyothi, Aditi Swami and Parneet Kaur won India's first Gold medal at the 2023 Berlin World Archery Championships.
A swimmer turned archer
But how did Jyothi come to archery? She did not take archery as her first sport and surprisingly was a world record-breaking swimmer. Jyothi's first love was swimming, she was introduced to the water sport at the age of three. A year later, she went on to break a world record. The star athlete also holds a feat in the Limca Book of Records when she swam across the Krishna river in Vijayawada on three occasions within three hours, 20 minutes and six seconds.
It was a little later in 2007 when her parents wanted her to choose archery. It was not a much known sport for her initially but she fell in love with it. "I didn’t know much about archery but once you do something for a long time you fall in love with it and I think that was the scenario for me. As I grew and learnt more about archery, it interested me and I’ve continued it from there," she said as quoted by World Archery. Now she has gone on to become one of the top compound archers in the world.
Jyothi received the Arjuna Award in 2017 from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in India. As seen on the Asian Games website, Jyothi's ambition is to win the Gold medal at the Asian Games 2023. She now has three of them. A dream come true!
