Deepika Kumari Atanu Das Love Story: 29-year-old Indian archer Atanu Das defeated two-time Olympic champion Oh Jin Hyek and has made it to the the 1/8 Elimination round in the men's individual archery event at the Tokyo Games 2020. His wife, Deepika Kumari, is former world number one archer. She could be spotted cheering for her husband from the stands.
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How did their love story start? When did they decide to get married? How did they become the second married Indian couple to compete at the Olympics together? Here's their story.
Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari were batchmates at the Tata Academy in Jamshedpur. Initially, they weren't friends as there existed a language barrier between them. Deepika said in an interview that he didn't know Hindi and so he didn't talk to her.
But gradually they got to know each other and ironed out their differences and big egos by talking to each other.
They both participated in the 2016 Rio Olympics together but the thought of dating didn't strike them. Cupid struck them in 2017. Interestingly, it was almost a decade after they first met. It was their defeat in 2017 World Championships in Mexico City which gave them a chance to bond over a lot of soul searching, as per sources.
“We went shopping together and bonded well. Nobody proposed as such, it was just a mutual feeling and happened during our stint in Mexico City. We started thinking about when we will be able to win again and we started planning our shooting.” Das said.
They didn't want to disclose about their relationship to anyone so they decided to keep the whole matter private. They made it public around their engagement in December (2018)
The duo wanted to get hitched after the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. The pandemic postponed Tokyo Olympics but they tied the knot on June 30 in a quiet ceremony in Deepika's hometown, Ranchi.
The duo is now the first Indian couple to take part in the same discipline in an Olympic Games.
In April this year, Archer Atanu Das won the the World Cup Stage 1. He credited his success to his wife and said, " It’s Deepika who has played the most part in my first gold medal". Read the full article here.
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