Six hundred and ninety-eight out of a possible seven hundred and twenty.
That is what Sheetal Devi — the armless para archer from Jammu and Kashmir, currently world number one and reigning world champion — put up in women's compound qualification at Stage 3 of the Hyundai World Archery Para Series in Ahmedabad, taking the top seed in the process.
The stage matters as much as the score. This is the first international para archery event India has hosted on home soil, which means a generation of para athletes in this region got to watch the discipline's best from inside the country rather than on a delayed stream.
How the Indian squad went
Comprehensively. The women's compound team of Sheetal, Lalpati and Sarita topped qualification on 1,368 points, taking the number one seeding and a direct entry into the semifinals. The men's compound team went one better on 1,398, also seeded first — with Rakesh Kumar second individually on 702, Toman Kumar fourth, Gurwinder Singh eighth and Shyam Sunder Swami thirteenth.
In the VI1 category, Yugal Garg, Pawan Kumar and Tanvi Ingale all reached the semifinals, which guarantees India at least two medals from that category alone.
Sheetal's next assignment is the mixed team compound event, where she and Toman Kumar go in as top seeds.
Why this one lands differently here
Sheetal Devi is, by some distance, the most recognisable athlete J&K has produced in the last decade — a Paris 2024 mixed team bronze medallist who shoots with her feet, and who was a schoolgirl in a Jammu-region village not very long ago.
For a young athlete in this region, the useful part of her record is not the medal count. It is that the pathway she took — a talent identification camp, then structured coaching, then national selection — is the same pathway that still runs through the trials and academies advertised here every few weeks. J&K's free academies at Khel Gaon and its cash award scheme for athletes are the same infrastructure, still open.
One note for anyone following the results this week: reports differ slightly on the competition days, with the qualification round variously placed on 5–6 and 6–7 September. The scores and seedings above are consistent across sources; the exact calendar day of each round is not, so check the event page before assuming a schedule.
