(From left) Abhishek Verma, Rajat Chauhan and Sandeep Kumar celebrate with their coach after winning the compound men’s team gold medal on Saturday. Source:AP

Rajat Chauhan stares longingly at the gold medal, eyes moist, before mumbling: “Meri maa ne jo zevar beche the, uske saamne yeh sona kuch nahi (this gold is worth less than the jewellery my mother had to sell).”

On Saturday, he and his teammates Abhishek Verma and Sandeep Kumar passed perhaps the toughest test of their careers. They say beating Korea is the most challenging thing in archery. Such has been their reputation in archery that beating them in their own backyard is considered unthinkable.

But Chauhan, a 19-year-old from Jaipur whose mother sold her gold to buy equipment for her son; Kumar, the son of an ex-armyman, who had to take a loan to buy a set of bow and arrows and Verma, an Income Tax officer with the Indian government, combined to pull off a coup of sorts, beating the home team 227-225 in the men’s compound team final in front of a vocal crowd at the Gyeyang archery field to clinch the gold medal.

Verma, in fact, missed a chance for a rare double after he lost to Iran’s Esmaeli Ebadi 145-141 in the singles final, to settle for silver. Verma, the most experienced archer of the lot, however, played a pivotal role in beating South Korea in the team event, shooting 10s consistently and also playing the motivator-in-chief for his teammates.

The South Koreans have a unique way of preparing for top international events. Their archers are made to practice in front of packed baseball stadiums during intervals between innings. Playing in front of a crowd of 30,000-40,000 and in the noise helps them learn to cope with distractions, they say. The crowd on Saturday wasn’t that strong; 10 percent of it maybe. Neither were they a distraction; they were already silenced. What looked disconcerting for them was the demeanour of the three Indians. They joked and cackled, stood there unfazed, not getting bogged down by the pressure.

‘un-Indian’ indians

Their casual, carefree attitude on the field had a telling impact on the Koreans, who would later admit that this was a very ‘un-Indian’ thing. “It was very unnatural for an Indian team to be so calm between rounds,” Korea’s Youngho Yang observes.

Chauhan says this comes naturally to them. The first thing they discussed on the morning of their final was not the final or the strategy. It was their attire. “We wanted to look good on the podium. Kya pata kaun dekh raha hoga hamein tv par. (who knows who’s going to watch us on TV). All three of us look good in blue, so we decided to go ahead with it,” he says. “There was no point talking about the final on the morning of the event. We were prepared for it. The game plan in archery is simple: hit the bull’s-eye,” Kumar adds.

These men, make their jobs look easy. More than once they were asked tough questions by the Koreans. But they gave a fitting reply. It comes naturally to them, Chauhan says, adding that they are the ‘official entertainers of the team’. “We are the three jokers. Sandeep is a serious joker, if there is a thing like that,” he says.

For the archery team, they were the jokers in the pack, turning the fortunes around and lifting the sagging morale after an unimpressive performance in Incheon. Earlier, the women’s compound team won bronze medal and the recurve team has an opportunity to match the feat on Sunday, when they take on Japan in the women’s playoff.

Compound archery is a non-Olympic event and made its debut at the Asian Games here. India along with the USA and South Korea are strong exponents of this form, which involves mechanical bows and has gained international recognition just a decade ago.