• Aditi Gopichand Swami secured India’s first-ever individual title at the World Archery Championships with compound women’s gold in Berlin.

• Aditi became the youngest-ever senior world champion at 17 years.

• She defeated Andrea Becerra of Mexico in the compound women’s final.

• Hailing from Maharashtra’s Satara, the teenager shot a near perfect score of 149 out of a possible 150 points to prevail over Andrea Becerra of Mexico by two points. 

• The Class 12 student also became a double world champion in less than two months, having won the Under-18 title in Youth Championships in Limerick, Ireland on July 8. 

• She is now the first individual world champion in archery from India, across any discipline and gender.

• Ojas Pravin Deotale also became the world champion when he bagged the compound men’s title. 

• Deotale, who hails from Nagpur, defeated Lukasz Przybylski of Poland by one point in a thrilling finish en route to the men’s title.

• Aditi and Deotale train at the same under academy in Satara under coach Pravin Sawant.

• Aditi along with Parneet Kaur and Jyothi Surekha Vennam had secured India’s first ever World Archery Championships gold by winning the compound women’s team final. 

• India recorded their best ever finish in the showpiece with four medals — three gold and one bronze.

Compound bow

• The compound bow was invented in the 1960s as a more mechanically efficient piece of archery equipment. The design uses a levering system of pulleys and cables, making it faster and decidedly more accurate than other types of bow.

• Compound was first included on the programme of the World Archery Championships in 1995. It has been included in the Archery World Cup since its launch in 2006, and it features on the programme of the World Games as well.

• An archer shooting a compound bow pulls the string back to the mechanical stop using a release aid, with the strength required to draw the bow decreasing as the bow is drawn. 

• The archer aims at the target through a magnified scope and activates his release aid to detach it from the string. The energy stored in the bent limbs and taught cables transfers into the arrow, sending it downrange to the target. 

• Drawing a competitive compound bow can require up to 28 kilograms of force, although at full draw the holding weight can be as little as 6 kilograms, and an arrow shot from a compound bow can travel at speeds of over 350 kph.

Recurve bow

• The recurve bow is the modern evolution of traditional bows that have existed for thousands of years. 

• The limbs positioned at the top and bottom of the bow curve back away from the archer at each tip. This is what gives the ‘re-curve’ its name.

• Recurve has been the bow style used at the Olympic Games since archery’s reintroduction to the programme in 1972. The rules for the recurve bow have evolved with technology and competitive standards but have remained largely unchanged since World Archery was founded in 1931.

• To shoot a recurve bow, an archer holds the grip, lifts their arms up to shoulder height and pulls the string back to their face using their fingers. At full draw, they aim at the target through a sight and open their fingers to release the string. 

• The energy stored in the bent limbs transfers through the string and into the arrow, sending it downrange to the target. 

• Drawing a competitive recurve bow can require more than 20 kilograms of force, and an arrow shot from a recurve bow can travel at speeds of over 200 kph.

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