The modern-day Arjun: How Limba Ram blazed a new trail for Indian archery

This is precisely why the likes of Prakash Padukone in badminton, Anjali Bhagwat in shooting still have a special space in the heart of every sports lover. “R S Sodhi sir would tell me that I was made for this sport and that gave me a lot of confidence,” Ram told a radio channel a few years ago. Months after joining the camp, he went on to win the junior nationals in Bangalore and a year later was selected in the India squad for the 1988 Seoul Olympics at the age of 16. It wasn’t a memorable outing for the Indian contingent but Ram learned a lot about discipline and strength training from the South Koreans and was determined to defeat the world’s best archers one day. He fulfilled that dream a year later when he helped the Indian team bag the Asian Championship gold and he himself clinched the silver in the individual event. Ram was in such form in 1992 that for the first time since the 1980 Moscow Games, the Indian contingent in Barcelona Olympics was hopeful of ending a medal drought in the quadrennial event. But Ram admitted in the radio interview that his form began to suffer because of the pressure ahead of the tournament and the officials ended up hurting his focus in the Games village on the eve of his competition. Used to winning rather easily in the domestic circuit, Ram struggled to handle the downward curve as he lost in three consecutive nationals and then started visiting sadhus and looking for heavenly intervention. His only coaching stint with the national team from 2009-12 also turned out to be controversial as stories of how players did not listen to him started surfacing before the 2012 London Olympics. In the last few years, Ram had simply faded from the public memory as the likes of Deepika Kumar, Atanu Das and others began winning medals on the international stage.