Pravin Jadhav

Some Lesser Known Facts About Pravin Jadhav

• Pravin Jadhav is an Indian Archer who competed in the 2019 World Archery Championships alongside Tarundeep Rai and Atanu Das. The team went on to reach the finals and became the first Indian Archery team to qualify for the finals since 2005.

  

• Jadhav grew up in an impoverished family. His father was a daily wage farm labourer. They were living in a small hut near a drain where a two-time meal a day was a luxury. There was no electricity neither clean water. He would accompany his father to the farm to work. In an interview, he revealed that
  

  The only reason he picked up a bow, against his family’s wish — was to escape poverty.”Working with my father during my childhood was a blessing in disguise. There is some external force on this planet that helps when you are struggling.”

• His life was full of hardships. He was destined to become labour, but life had something else stored for him. His primary school teacher Baban Bhujbal advised him to opt for sports as his career. So, he chose athletics as that required almost zero investment. His teacher told in an interview that
  

  It looked like an obvious choice. But we soon realised he lacked the stamina to do well. Once, he fainted just while warming up. He was severely undernourished.”

  

  Bhujpal then took care of all his dietary requirements and as time went by, he gained proficiency in 400m and 800m races. Recalling that time, Jadhav said

  I remember him asking all the school children to bring one nutritious food item to school for me and the other athletes trying to make it to the Krida Prabodhini school. He used to feed me eight eggs every day along with chicken preparations. All the expenses were borne by him.”

•  He was planning to quit his school after seventh, then one of the teachers advised him to join the Krida Prabodhini, a state-run programme for the young talents in sports. He agreed to join the programme. This programme provides free coaching, education, and residence for athletes from rural areas.

• At the early age of 13, he was part of the programme and received training at Balewadi in Pune. But despite his performance as a runner, the battery of tests conducted at the sports school showed that Jadhav was suitable for Archery. He was then sent to Amravati to train under Praful Dange, an archery coach at Krida Prabodhini.

• Praful once told in an interview that
  

  Archery is a difficult sport and many aspirants lose patience within a year. Jadhav had to survive the period. “We make archers train with a bamboo bow for a year. The professional bow is only given after that if they show enough interest.”

• Jadhav was physically weaker in comparison with his peers. In fact, he struggled with the weight of recurve bow. He would experience pain in his shoulders while firing the arrow, which prompted Krida Prabhodini to release him from the programme. Bhujpal then tried every means to let him back into the programme but it was in vain.

  

• Later a sports enthusiast named Palkar agreed to help Jadhav. They both covered 800 Km in a car overnight to reach Amravati. On his insistence, Krida authorities gave Jadhav a chance to hit five shots to prove his worth. Jadhav was successful with a 45 plus score.

• That became the turning point in his career. He didn’t look back from thereon. In 2015, at the age of 19, he got the call from an Indian side to represent the country for Asia Cup stage in Bangkok, Thailand. He straightaway won the bronze medal for his team at the recurve event.

• His time with the Krida Prabhodini was coming to an end. He had to arrange the money to finance his Archery kit costing 2.5 Lakhs. He used to get 9000 INR per month from the academy, which wasn’t enough. But since, he represented the nation so the government of India rewarded him 2.5 Lakh INR.

• His financial condition got stable with time. He soon joined the army in 2017 under the sports quota. With that money, he asked his father not to do the daily wage job. Instead, he bought him a dairy cattle farm so that his father can sell the milk. In the same year, he won the gold medal in the national championship at Cuttack, Odisha.

  

• From 2015 to 2019, he competed in six international tournaments and won two medals, which include a silver medal at the World Archery Championships in Hertogenbosch, Netherlands on 16 June 2019. Not only this but his team also bagged a place in Tokyo Olympics 2020.