Jyothi Surekha Vennam comes across as soft-spoken. The sense of awkwardness when she talks about herself is unmissable. But ask about her parents’ reaction after she returned from the Asian Games with three gold medals and her eyes light up.
India won a record haul of 107 medals at the recently-concluded Asian Games in Hangzhou and Jyothi was one of the standout performers from the country. The 27-year-old compound archer delivered a stunning performance to win gold medals in three events – women’s individual, women’s team and mixed team.
“My parents were delighted when they finally got to meet me,” said Jyothi. “I received a very warm welcome from everyone in Vijayawada. There was a felicitation ceremony conducted for me, which was attended by students from my school and college, officials from the sports authority and employees of the state government. I felt so happy.”
Born in Challapalli in Andhra Pradesh, Jyothi was invested in swimming as a kid and etched her name in the Limca Book of Records after crossing the Krishna river as a four-year-old. Her father, Vennam Surendra Kumar, who had been a kabaddi player in college, realised that the aquatic facilities in their hometown weren’t good enough and decided to introduce his daughter to archery when she was 11.
Although she kept pursuing academics and went on to complete her B.Tech and MBA degrees, she also received continuous support from her parents to play sports.
Having won medals consistently at Asian and world events since 2011, Jyothi remained a prominent figure in Indian archery. Unfortunately, though, she kept missing out on the top spot at World Cups. It was only at Paris last year that she finally broke through and hasn’t looked back since. This year, she won four gold medals at World Cups and one at the World Championships.
“This year has been really great,” she said. “I’m very happy with my performances and the way I’ve been shooting all season. I think I started to focus more on the positives rather than the negatives. There’s no specific routine that I follow. I like to remain in my zone off the field as well and that has helped me. We do meditation and visualisation, which helps us a great deal during crunch moments in a competition.”
As Indians swept the compound events in Hangzhou, former Italian compound archer Sergio Pagni’s influence as coach also became apparent. The 44-year-old had worked with the Indian team for a brief period before the 2018 Asian Games as well.
“This time, he (Pagni) was with us from December till the Asian Games,” said Jyothi. “He works with us as a team as well as individually. Because it depends from person to person, I may need one thing and another player may need something else. So, he looks at each area that all of the players need to focus on and improve. He has a lot of experience and has been performing on the international circuit for the last 20 years. He keeps sharing his knowledge, which helps a lot in our overall growth.”
Jyothi admits that the long-awaited glory at world events this year means a lot to her, but the Asian Games was an event she was focussed on throughout.
“For all of us in the Indian team, the Asian Games were running at the back of our minds from the start of the season but we had World Cups and the World Championships in between,” she said. “We then had a national camp in September where we began our preparations for Hangzhou. It feels great that all our hard work paid off.”
Her tendency to deflect attention is also apparent from the fact that she answers most questions from the team’s point of view, rather than focussing on just herself. Along with youngsters like Aditi Swami and Ojas Deotale, Jyothi has indeed raised the bar for Indian archery. And whether she likes it or not, it seems she’ll have to continue dealing with the spotlight in the years to come.