A national Archery legend, Dola Banerjee celebrates her 40th birthday on June 2, 2020 (Tuesday). A member of the first Indian women’s archery team to win an Asian Games medal, Banerjee was born to an auto-rickshaw driver and a nurse in a small locality of Baranagar in the North 24 Parganas of Kolkata. She is the cousin of famous Indian singer Shaan (Shantanu Mukherjee) and her parents wanted to follow the family tradition by asking Banerjee to pursue a career in singing. She even received classical singing training at a young age. But joining an archery club, changed her life.

She was introduced to archery when the coach of a local club asked her father to enrol her in archery. But the slow nature of the game looked boring and of disinterest to her until she won a state meet and grabbed everyone’s attention. She has since represented the country in 2 Olympic events, 3 Asian Games, 11 Archery World Cups and 4 Archery World Championships and has won multiple international medals for the country. On her birthday, take a look at some interesting facts about Dola Banerjee.

  • Dola Banerjee was born in Baranagar locality of Kolkata on June 2, 1980

  • Her father Ashok Banerjee is an auto-rickshaw driver and mother Kalpana is a nurse at a local hospital

  • Dola Banerjee is the cousin of Bollywood Indian singer Shantanu Mukherjee, popularly called Shaan

  • Banerjee's brother Rahul is also an archer and has won multiple laurels for India

  • Dola won a gold medal in the individual Recurve category at the 2007 Archery World Cup

  • Banerjee was part of the first Indian team that won the gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games

  • In 2007, Dola Banerjee became the second woman archer to be conferred with the Arjuna Award

Banerjee shot into stardom in 2007 after she won the individual gold medal at the Archery World Cup. She followed it with a bronze medal in the same category at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. She was also part of the Indian team that won the gold medal at the same event – a first India’s archery’s history. The Indian team also won a bronze medal at 2010 Asian Games. In total, Dola Banerjee has won more than 16 gold medals, 3 silver and 8 bronze medals for the country.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 02, 2020 08:30 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).