Korean male compound archer Kim Jong-ho was an absolute beast of the Mixed Team event at Archery World Championships — winning four back to back world titles with different partners till 2019. India’s Jyothi Surekha Vennam doesn’t have a gold at the World’s, but two mixed team silvers at 2021 and most recently at the 2025 edition, make her one of Compound Archery’s most dependable athletes at the all-important Asian Games.

For all her previous glory, the consistent medals that define her longevity and the individual genius, will pale in comparison to what’s at stake at the Aichi Nagoya Asian Games. The mixed team gold offers a quota place for the LA Olympics. Vennam won the mixed gold alongwith Ojas Deotale in a three gold haul at Hangzhou Asiad, and a repeat of the paired title will make XD gold more precious than others.

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“There will be extra motivation to seal a quota place. While we train hard with same passion and intensity as always, people’s perception changes with this,” Vennam explained to . “There’s also motivation that India mixed teams are strong and we have proved it since a long time. And that’ll be the case in future too. Olympics event is new for us but it’s same mentality as well as training. Rest of countries are also looking to better in both men and women sections to find balance in mixed events,” she adds.

The catch with Mixed Team is that the gold will hinge only halfway on Vennam — the male archers, World No 15 Kushal Dalal, No 22 Sahil Jadhav or No 92 Ganesh Thirumani will have to match Vennam’s precision and steely nerves – and that’s where we deal in unknowns.

Vennam has three World’s medals from 8 editions – 2 silver, 1 bronze. Her partnership with Rishabh Yadav fetched her one of those silvers in 2025 where they had managed to beat Chinese Taipei pair of Chang Cheng-wei and Huang I-iou – one of the main gold contenders at Nagoya.

She has 11 World Cup stage medals, but she realises the different dynamic of mixed where the partner is equally crucial. Also, a giant part of Mixed Team is time management – with a combined shooting window allotted. “One member can take extra time sometime and then the other has to shoot within what’s left. And the same can happen in scoring. One member can have a bad shot and the other helps the team recover. But the focus is on believing your process and giving your best,” Vennam says.

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India currently tops among Asians in world rankings at 4th behind Netherlands, USA and Denmark. Only four Asians are in the world’s top 20 mixed teams: Chinese Taipei at 8th, Korea at 9th and Kazakhstan at 11th spot. But Korea, the most dominant Recurve nation, can hardly be dismissed given the high stakes of an Olympic spot.

Korea dropped So Chae-won, the successful partner of Kim Jong-ho after they lost the 2025 World championship


quarters at home in Gwangju to the Taiwanese. They went by form including World University Games bronze medallist Park Yerin, besides two-time World Cup medallist Choi Sun Gyu and  2025 World Championships bronze medallist Choi Yong-hee, even as Kim Jong-ho, looms large.

“India, Chinese Taipei and Korea are the countries which have strong male and female archers. In practice, we make all the three women archers train with all three men archers rotating the sequence and it helps in different pairings. Lately, Kazakhstan and China too have been doing well apart from Malaysia in mixed team format,” says coach Jiwanjot Singh Teja.

World Championships quarter-finalists Andrey TyunTyun and Roxanna Yunussova of Kazakhstan (1398),  World Cup mixed team bronze medallists and Fatin Nurfateh and Mohammad Juwaidi Maliki of Malaysia are also in the mix.

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Vennam has been staggeringly consistent in individuals, but the mixed team gold when it truly matters, is what makes the Nagoya fortnight the biggest challenge of her career.