Getting ready for the Worlds

The 22-year-old archer rewrote the compound mixed team world record with Jyothi Surekha

- Shantanu Srivastava

Rishabh Yadav is groggy and jetlagged. He has barely got any sleep since landing from Madrid on Tuesday morning, but the 22-year-old is already looking forward to training with mentor Abhishek Verma in SAI's Sonepat campus the next day. Moving on from success and failures is something he has assiduously learned from Verma and Jyothi Surekha Vennam -- with whom he set the compound mixed team world record last week, and it has stood him in good stead in his young international career.

Last week, Vennam and Yadav topped the qualification in the fourth stage of the World Cup in Madrid, shooting a combined 1431 to surpass the previous mark of 1429, held by Denmark's Tanja Gellenthien and Mathias Fullerton from the Krakow-Malopolska 2023 European Games. Yadav, who was also in line to break the individual world record (718) but finished two short, came to know about the mixed-team achievement only when the giant screen flashed the record.

“We were obviously elated, but grounded. Both Jyothi and Abhishek are quite calm and that is something I have learned from them. It’s the first time a senior archery world record belongs to India. Owning a world record has been a longstanding dream,” Yadav said.