From the bliss of marriage to the dream of winning a medal for India in the Olympics, it cannot get any better for these ace archers.
Indian archers Deepika Kumari and Atanu Das, who tied the knot in the Jharkhand capital on Tuesday evening, will be the second married couple from the country to participate in the Olympics.
Jennifer and Vece Paes, parents of tennis ace Leander Paes, are the only other Indian couple who participated in the Olympics after their marriage.
Jennifer, a basketball player, and Vece, a hockey midfielder, took part in the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Deepika secured her quota in the Tokyo Olympics after she bagged a gold medal in the Asian Continental Qualifying tournament in November 2019.
On the other hand, Atanu along with Tarundeep Rai and Pravin Jadhav, who comprise the men’s recurve team, booked their spot in the Olympics after their 5-3 win against Canada in the pre-quarter finals of the World Championship.
Engaged in 2018, Deepika and Atanu had planned to marry after the Tokyo Olympics, which was scheduled to be held this year.
But they advanced their marriage date after the Olympics was deferred to 2021 in view of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We can now join the camp when it begins later this year,” Deepika told mediapersons in Ranchi before her marriage on Tuesday.
Both Deepika and Atanu also participated in the Rio Olympics in 2016 but they were not married then.
This will be Deepika’s third appearance in the Olympics, after 2012 and 2016. It will be her husband Atanu’s second Olympics appearance after Rio.
Deepika hails from Ranchi.
Like Atanu, Jennifer Paes also hails from Calcutta. She is the great granddaughter of Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutta who became famous for his amitrakshar chhando (blank verse).
Though there are quite a few Indian couples who represented the country in different Olympics, they were not married when they did so.
Among such couples who married later were sprinter Manjeet Kaur and hockey player Gurwinder Singh Chandi who participated in the London Olympics in 2012 but got married in 2015.
Similarly, badminton players Saina Nehwal and Parupalli Kashyap, who represented India in the 2016 London Olympics, married in 2018.
