Mumbai: Ten days after returning from an Olympics that had more moments of heartbreak for her, Deepika Kumari swung back into training — an anomaly to lengthy breaks that most athletes grant themselves at the end of an Olympic cycle.

Why didn’t she? “Honestly, when you win a medal, you can think about taking a break,” Deepika said. “When you don’t win a medal, when you feel like you’ve done nothing, when you’re not satisfied, break leke kaise sukoon mil sakta hai (what’s the point of taking a break)?”

Deepika did win a medal, after all. Not the one she desperately seeks, but one that she hadn’t got her hands on for six years. Deepika won silver at the World Cup Final in Mexico on Sunday, her first medal since 2018 in the tournament that pits the season’s best performing archers. Six medals (five silver, one bronze) from nine World Cup Final appearances is a flaunt-worthy CV, yet it has one thing missing: gold.

“To be a medallist among the world’s top archers feels good,” said Deepika, who lost to China’s Li Jiaman in the final. “But I was disappointed at not winning gold. I still haven’t figured out how I can win the final of this event. It can get frustrating. But I hope the gold will come one day.”

It is, essentially, the story of Deepika’s career. India’s most decorated archer has a rich spread of medals across tournaments, but also one gaping hole. The 2024 Olympics too wouldn’t fill it, with Deepika crashing out in the individual quarter-final after the team exited at the same stage as a familiar gloom engulfed her. Two months on she is smiling again, swirling in this almost paradoxical zone of grabbing more medals while still craving the one she is after.

“For me, it’s important to keep winning medals. Otherwise, mujhte lagta hai mein zinda nahi hu (I don’t feel alive). It also keeps alive the hunger, that greed — that I still don’t have something for which I have been working all these years,” Deepika said. “Things do get frustrating, when you come close to your target but come out having nothing. You feel like you have wasted your life.”

The 30-year-old felt a shadow of herself for two years while she was out of the national team, a period where she also became a mother. Paris was therefore a distant dream, until it got all too real earlier this year. Reclaiming her spot in the Indian team, Deepika was suddenly back in the thick of things — competing in international events (and winning medals), jostling to qualify for Paris (and getting there).

“Suddenly, I was back in the team, and in an Olympic year. It was less time, and a lot of pressure. I remember in my first tournament back, mein bahut ghabra gayi thi. I had never felt that way before,” Deepika said. “That was a new experience for me, and a big question mark.”

Deepika went into the Paris Games in form and “mentally prepared”, even if not physically. What went wrong, then?

“That one shot,” she said. Leading 4-2 in her quarter-final against Korea’s Nam Suhyeon, Deepika shot a 7 between two 10s in the fourth set. “That one shot pulled me down. Wohi dubaya hai iss Olympics mein.”

A younger Deepika, she said, would not harp too much on it. “But as we grow older,” she added, “you tend to overthink. That has been happening to me for the last two years. I wanted to see myself back in best shape, and I started thinking way too much about that. I don’t know why that was... because of pressure or what... and not from the outside, but from within.”

From the outside, social media was relentless in dragging Deepika down for another Olympics setback (she was back up to being applauded for the World Cup Final silver). It’s both good and bad, Deepika reckons, that she doesn’t see a lot of social media. “I’d heard, right after our team matches, that I received a lot of criticism,” Deepika said. “Look, it’s part of life. If you do well, people will like you. If you don’t, people will forget everything.”

Deepika doesn’t want to forget the one medal she is still chasing. Not at 30, as a mother who has “hardly spent 3-4 months” with her daughter since she was born in December 2022. Notwithstanding four failed returns, she remains motivated to invest another four years into it.

“At one point I told myself, ‘mein thak gayi hu haar haar ke. Next time abhi gold hi jeetna hai yaha se (I’m tired of just losing here, I want to take the gold next time)’,” Deepika said.

“I want to hold medals from every competition. I can’t live with the fact that I don’t have in one. Forget people, I don’t want to tell myself that ‘Deepika, you don’t have a medal from this competition’. I don’t just want to be an Olympian. I want to be an Olympic medallist.”

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