Despite winning the most coveted prize of his career, ace archer Jayanta Talukdar talks about the forthcoming National Ranking Competition in Jamshedpur and the Asian Championships in Xian rather than the Arjuna Award. Talukdar is the third Assamese to win this Award after athlete Bhogeswar Barua and paddler Monalisa Barua Mehta.

“I would have been happier if it had come along with the Indian team’s qualification for the Beijing Olympics,” said Talukdar while answering a congratulatory call this morning.

The Indian team failed to make it to the Beijing Olympics after repeated attempts in the World Cups and the World Championships in Leipzig. Now they have an opportunity to bag at least two individual berths via the Asian Championships.

Jayanta, who has been out of action all this while due to a shoulder injury, is now dying to make a mark in Jamshedpur, which will give him the ticket to the Asian meet, and then at Xian, to make his long cherished dream of representing the country in the Olympics a reality.

“This has been the biggest achievement in my career so far but even then I am not ecstatic or overjoyed. I am happy, but after my performance during the last couple of years I was in fact expecting this. But I am now just focusing on the two most important competitions on hand so that I can give India something to cheer about in the Olympics,” Talukdar told The Indian Express. Talk to his father Ranjan Talukdar and he echoes the same.

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