Kolkata, Two years ago, Dhiraj Bommadevara walked away from Paris heartbroken after narrowly missing what would have been India's first Olympic archery medal.
Leading 2-0 in the recurve mixed team semifinal alongside Ankita Bhakat, Dhiraj watched the match slip away against South Korea's Kim Woojin and Lim Sihyeon.
But in Antalya on Sunday, Dhiraj stood atop the podium twice after scripting one of the finest days in Indian archery.
The 24-year-old defeated arch-nemesis South Korea twice en route to a historic double gold haul at the Archery World Cup Stage 3 -- first in the recurve mixed team event alongside 17-year-old Kumkum Mohod and then individually against Paris Olympics bronze medallist Lee Woo Seok.
Never before had the country won two gold medals at a World Cup stage, overcoming South Korea.
The journey
For Dhiraj, however, this triumph was about something far more personal.
It was the reward for his father's unusual decision to become an archery judge to support him and a mother's sacrifice of selling her Mangalsutra to keep alive a dimming dream.
Born in Sikkim, where his father Shrawan Kumar was working with first woman Speaker of the Sikkim Legislative Assembly Kalawati Subba, Dhiraj moved with his family to their native Royyuru near Vijayawada.
Unable to find stable employment and struggling to settle down, Shrawan and his wife Revathy started a small school - Marigold Public School around 2005-06 in Krishna Lanka.
"All private schools were charging Rs 50,000 to 1 lakh in donations so we thought of having our own school and took it up as a challenge.
Initially, the school had barely 15 students, and one of them was Dhiraj.
"We were charging just Rs 25 per month as fees," Shrawan told PTI from Yanamalakuduru on the outskirts of Vijayawada.
The income was modest and often just enough to sustain the family.
Yet sports remained a constant passion for Shrawan, whose father had served in the paramilitary forces in Sikkim.
He regularly took young Dhiraj to the nearby Indira Gandhi Municipal Corporation Stadium, hoping he would find a calling.
"I introduced him to badminton, football, tennis and cricket, but he showed no interest," Shrawan recalled.
"Then he noticed some archers practising nearby. For three or four months he kept watching them."
Eventually, Shrawan took him to the Volga Archery Academy run by Satyanarayana.
The academy was initially reluctant to admit such a young child but Shrawan persisted.
"I told them, 'It's my responsibility. He will listen and follow instructions. Just give him a chance."
An archery judge
As Dhiraj took the sport more seriously, Shrawan realised he needed to understand archery better to help his son. Later, he cleared the Archery Association of India's judges' examination in 2008.
Today, he is one of Andhra's senior archery judges.
"It became a turning point," Shrawan recalled.
"I learnt archery myself and could guide him all the time. I understood the rules, the technical details and the competition environment.
"It became a father-son journey. We travelled together through every stage."
But the biggest challenge was still to come as the family faced a financial crisis in 2017.
Dhiraj needed imported equipment to continue his training, but the family could not afford it.
The young archer was seriously considering giving up the sport back then.
That was when Revathy, his mother, stepped in.
She sold her mangalsutra -- the sacred necklace traditionally worn by married Hindu women -- to secure a loan so that her son could buy a bow.
"There was a time in 2017 when I was almost ready to give up archery because we couldn't afford the equipment," Dhiraj recalled after his double gold feat.
"My mother mortgaged her mangalsutra so that I could buy a bow. I loved archery so much, and my parents trusted me completely and took that loan.
"For a middle-class family, that's a very big thing. Today, archery is giving all of that back to my parents."
The emotion in his voice was unmistakable.
"This win is really special to me. First of all, I want to thank my mom and dad.
"It has been almost 20 years since I started archery and today I have become a World Cup champion.
"The hard work that has gone behind this... there is still a lot more to achieve, but this shows we are moving in the right direction.
"It gives me motivation to work harder, not just for myself but for the entire team," he said.
The double gold in Antalya might have felt like a redemption for him after his Paris Olympics slip.
More to come
But Shrawan believes the achievement reflects a fundamental shift in Indian archery's mindset.
"Earlier, whenever Korea was our opponent, we would discuss how we could beat them," he said.
"There was always a sense of fear...Now the attitude has changed. Whoever is standing in front of us, we are not going to budge and that fearless mindset is the biggest difference."
Before Sunday, the last Indian recurve archer to defeat a Korean opponent in a World Cup gold medal match was Deepika Kumari, who beat Lee Sung-jin in Antalya in 2012, and became world No. 1 ahead of the London Olympics.
Now, 13 years later, Dhiraj achieved a similar feat at the same venue.
"Really excited for this. But this is just the beginning. You will hear the Indian national anthem more often from here on," Dhiraj summed up.
