Name: Limba Ram Ahari
Born: 30 January 1972, Saradeet, Udaipur
State: Rajasthan
Sport: Archery
Early life
Limba Ram was born into a poor Adivasi family of the Ahari tribe in Saradeet village, in the Jhadol area of Udaipur district, Rajasthan. As a boy he hunted birds and small game with a bow and arrow he fashioned himself from cane wood and reed, a skill born of necessity rather than sport. In 1987, when he was fifteen, the Sports Authority of India ran a talent-spotting trial near his village, and Limba was one of a handful of boys picked out and sent to New Delhi for formal coaching under R.S. Sodhi, a considerable leap for a boy who had never before left his home district.
A rapid rise
The move paid off almost immediately. Within months of taking up a modern recurve bow for the first time, Limba won the National Junior Championship in Bangalore in 1987, and the following year he became senior national champion as well, earning selection for the Seoul Olympics while still a teenager fresh out of a tribal village with no background in competitive archery. In 1989 he reached the quarter-finals of the World Championships in Lausanne, and took individual silver and team gold at the Asian Cup in Beijing, results that marked him out as India’s leading archer of his generation.
Equalling a world record
Limba Ram’s career peaked in 1992, when he equalled the world record held by Japan’s Takayoshi Matsushita in the 30-metre event at the Asian Archery Championships in Beijing, shooting a score of 357 out of 360 to win gold. The feat was celebrated in the Indian Parliament, a rare honour for an archer. He competed at the Barcelona Olympics that year, and again narrowly missed an Olympic medal at the 1993 World Cup, finishing tenth in the 70-metre round after coming up just one point short of bronze. In 1995 he took individual silver and team gold at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, and in 1996 he was national champion again and competed at his third Olympics, in Atlanta, having also represented India at Seoul in 1988 and Barcelona in 1992.
Injury and a second career
A serious shoulder injury sustained while playing football in Kolkata in 1996, during his time with the Tata Group, curtailed the competitive career that had once looked set to bring India its first Olympic archery medal. Limba Ram later worked with Punjab National Bank before turning to coaching, and he served as India’s national chief archery coach through to the London Olympics of 2012, passing on the discipline he had once learned from a bow of his own making. Under his charge, Indian archers won a haul of medals across World Cups, the Commonwealth Games, the Asian Games and world championships, and he is widely credited with the strong showing of Indian archery at the 2010 Commonwealth and Asian Games, a period that saw the sport gain a level of recognition in India it had not previously enjoyed.
Recognition
Limba Ram was honoured with the Arjuna Award in 1991 for his achievements on the field, and the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award, followed in 2012 in recognition of a career that had taken him from hunting with a homemade bow to the top of Indian archery, and then into shaping the next generation of the sport.
Achievements and awards
Gold medallist, team event, Asian Cup, Beijing, 1989; gold medallist, 30-metre event, Asian Archery Championships, Beijing, 1992 (equalling the world record); silver medallist, individual, and gold medallist, team event, Commonwealth Games, New Delhi, 1995; competed at the 1988 Seoul, 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Olympics; Arjuna Award, 1991; Padma Shri, 2012; national chief archery coach of India, 2009 to 2012.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
