Indian archer Atanu Das defeated two-time Olympic champion Oh Jin Hyek and made it to the 1/8 Elimination round in the men’s individual archery event at the Tokyo Games 2020, reports NDTV.
However, as the two archers battled each other, there were a small group of Koreans cheering for Oh Jin Hyek while there was just one person cheering for Atanu – his wife Deepika Kumari.
It can be said that she was the driving force behind Atanu’s win as she kept shouting ‘Good shot’ and ‘confidence’ every time Atanu shot closer to the bullseye.
The Indian Express quoted Atanu saying:
“I was hearing her full time. She was pushing me up: ‘believe in yourself’, ‘you can do it’, ‘just stay calm and handle the situation’. I am privileged to have my wife in this competition. She is a great support and motivation for me, so I really did my best in the match today,”
He went on to add:
“At the Olympic Village, I stay with the men’s team, she is staying with the women’s team but most of the time we are together.”
According to NDTV, Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari are the country’s famous archery couple ‘Dee-Das’. Their love story started way back in 2008 when they were batchmates at the Tata Academy in Jamshedpur.
However, they weren’t hit by the cupid’s arrow until much later. Earlier, there wasn’t much communication between the two due to a language barrier and when they overcame that, there were lots of childish fights!
“He didn’t know Hindi then, so he wouldn’t talk to me. It was so random, childish fights blew up. Kuchh bhi cheez pe bachpanaa that. Something as small as ‘why did you take my bottle of water?'”
They both participated in the Rio Olympics together back in 2016. But love bloomed in 2017. After the Indian recurve team suffered a heavy defeat in the 2017 World Championships in Mexico City, the two bonded over a lot of “soul searching”.
“We went shopping together and bonded well. All our misunderstandings, doubts and differences were ironed out. We didn’t want the other archers and our teammates to know about it really so we kept it private. We only made it public around the time we got engaged in December (2018),” Atanu said.
They planned on getting married after Tokyo Olympics 2020, but the games got postponed. So they finally tied the knot in June last year.
What an incredible love story!