Jyothi Surekha Vennam

Some Lesser Known Facts About Jyothi Surekha Vennam

• Jyothi Surekha Vennam is an Indian compound archer known for bagging gold medals at various compound archery events including the Archery World Cup, World Archery Championships and Asian Games. She came to the limelight in 2023 when she became the first Indian archer to win a gold medal at the World Archery Championships. In the same year, she won many gold medals at the Asian Games. Her current world ranking is 4.

• When she was 3 years old, she started swimming. In 2001, she set a record by becoming the youngest to swim 5 km across Krishna River in three hours, 20 minutes and six seconds. Her name was added to the Limca Book of Records. She could not continue swimming because of a lack of opportunities in the city. She left the sport and took admission to an academy where she started playing archery.

• When she turned 11, she started practising archery and used to participate in various tournaments at the junior level.

• In 2008, one year after joining the academy, she won her first medal in archery in the Under-13 nation in Vijayawada where she claimed six more gold medals.

• In 2017, when she won the Arjuna Award, she became the youngest person from South India to receive the award.

• In 2017, she was awarded a cash prize of Rs. 1 Crore and a housing site of 500 sq. yards in Vijayawada or Amaravati by the then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandrababu Naidu.

• In 2020, she was felicitated by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy after she won the 21st Asian Archery Championship (2019), Bangkok and 50th World Championships (2019) in the Netherlands.

  

• In the 2021 World Archery Championships, she became the first Indian to win three silver medals, one gold, four silver and three bronze medals.

• In January 2022, she participated in the Women’s Open Pro event at the Lancaster Archery Classic held near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States and came first in the event.

  

• In 2022, she was appointed as Deputy Collector by NTR District Collector Dr S Dilli Rao at the Collectorate in Vijayawada.

  

• She has won 53 international medals and 62 national ones.

• Jyoti does yoga and meditation to keep calm and focus which helps her in archery as well. She works out at the gym to train her shoulders.

• She practices archery for six hours every day and does two hours of physical training.