Deepika Kumari/Deepika Prajapati (Born on June 13, 1994 in Ranchi, Jharkhand) is a young Indian athlete who competes in the event of Archery. She won gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth games in the women's individual recurve event. She also won gold medal in the same competition in the women's team recurve event along with Dola Banerjee and Bombayala Devi.
Deepika become the second Indian to win the title after Palton Hansda won the World champion at Mexico in 2006 by winning the junior compound individual gold medal. She won the 11th Youth World archery Championship held in Ogden, USA in 2009, at an age of 15 years.
Deepika's father Shivnarayan Mahato, an auto-rickshaw driver and Smt. Geeta Mahato, a nurse in Ranchi Medical College. The parents stay at Ratu Chati village, 15 km away from Ranchi. Her mother says that she never used to miss her target while aiming for mangoes with stones in her childhood.
In the early days it was rather difficult for the parents to financially support Deepika's dream, often compromising on the family budget to buy her new equipments for her training. In fact, when her father came to know that she wanted to make a career in archery, her parents were supportive but financially they were unable to afford much. But the young gutsy archer never gave up and started her practice with bamboo made bows and arrows. Finally it was Deepika's cousin Vidya Kumari, also an archer at Tata Archery Academy, who showed her the way.
Deepika got her first breakthrough in 2005 when she entered Arjun Archery Academy, her professional archery journey begun in the year 2006 when she joined the Tata Archery Academy in Jamshedpur.
Deepika started her training in Tata Archery Academy with proper equipment and uniform. She also received Rs 500 as stipend. Deepika visited her home in three years only after winning the cadet World Championship title in November 2009. Even when the national camp at the SAI Eastern Centre in Kolkata is not on, she checks into the hostel of the KMCT College in Ranchi, where she is studying arts in first year junior college.
In the Delhi Commonwealth games 2010, Deepika won two gold medals, one in the individual event and other in the women's team recurve event, for this she was honoured with 'the Outstanding Performance at CWG (Female) award' at Sahara Sports Awards 2010. In 2012 London Olympics, Deepika competed in the Women's Individual and Women's team events, finishing in eighth place. She would go on to become world no. 1 in Women's Recurve Archery in 2012.
Deepika was honored with the Arjuna Award, India's second highest sporting award in the year 2012. In February 2014, she was honored with FICCI Sportsperson of the Year Award. In 2016, Deepika honored with Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in the Republic of India. She also won Young Achievers Award, Felicitated by Vogue in 2017.
