Kumkum Mohod becomes first Indian individual recurve gold medallist at Asian Games in Nagoya

Kumkum Mohod became the first Indian to win an individual Asian Games gold medal in recurve archery in Nagoya at the 2026 Asian Games on October 3, 2026. The 17-year-old credited self-belief and team support for her performance, saying, “Khud pe bhaorsa tha, team ka support tha.”

Mohod, who speaks little and smiles often outside competition, described a shift in focus under pressure and said her mindset during the event was different. “The mindset was very different today, I was very confident that I can do this. Excited also because this is my first Asian Games individual competition but the only thought before shooting was to keep faith in myself and focus on my process without bothering who I was up against,” she said.

She outlined how visualisation underpinned her preparation, recalling specific scenes she rehearsed in training. “I visualised a shoot-off scenario in the final and hitting the X to win it when I got selected for the Asian Games. We keep it as real as possible during training and today also when we came to the ground, I visualised shooting a 10 on every arrow and winning gold,” she added.

Mohod had expected the final shoot-off to be against Kang Chaeyoung but it instead came against Oh Yejin; she cited senior teammate Dhiraj Bommadevara as one of her favourites and described him as an elder-brother figure. The victory added to a sequence of results that the teenager described as turning early dreams into reality.

She traced the roots of her international success to a young age, saying she first won at the sub-junior nationals when she was 10 in 202. “I have always dreamt of winning right from childhood but the biggest of them all is the Olympics. But I never thought I would win three medals, two gold defeating Korea. The stage or age doesn’t matter, the aim is to just focus on the process and keep getting better,” she said, adding, “Score improve hone laga to sapne dekhne lagi.”

Describing her approach during the decisive moment, Mohod said she forced herself back into the present before the shoot-off. “While shooting, I only look at my target. Before the shoot-off, I told myself, ‘reset, don’t look at the arrow, focus on yourself and the process, the arrow will find its way to the target. It worked.”

After her medal wins she sent a picture of her two medals on Friday (October 2, 2026) back home and received the message, “one more gold left”. Now that her individual competition at the Asian Games is over, she said she might relax and watch comedy, adding softly, “Hasna pasand hai,” she says softly.