Kolkata, Jul 10 (PTI) When Parth Salunkhe and Aditi Swami became the youth world champions in Ireland last week, the drought-prone Satara in Maharashtra found its latest heroes in archery.

In just about two years time, the region has produced one Olympian (Pravin Jadhav), two youth world champions, as Maharashtra is reaping the success of the ‘Har Ghar Archery’ programme launched by Archery Association of India secretary general Pramod Chandurkar.

Parth and compound archer Aditi, who returned with individual and team golds, began their journey together from the same academy in Satara.

“Most of the households here talk just about archery,” said secondary school English teacher Sushant Salunkhe, who is flooded with congratulatory messages after his son Parth became the first Indian male recurve archer to become world youth champion.

Seeing the success of an under-nine state-level tournament from where many were making the national team, Salunkhe senior gave archery a serious thought and wanted his son to take up the sport when he was in standard three.

As part of the state archery programme, the sport was also introduced in his school, Shripatrao Patil High School, where Salunkhe would teach the sport.

“We would watch YouTube videos of seniors like Abhishek Verma, Atanu Das and many USA, Korean archers,” Parth told

Source: PTI News