Paris Olympics Dispatch: Chanting Gita and picking ‘that’ one face in the crowd gets a calm Manu Bhaker the medal

Paris: Manu Bhaker knows a thing or two about picking the tiniest of targets. No wonder then that she found the ‘bullseye’ 27 times, the highest among all shooters, in the qualification stages of the women’s 10m Air Pistol.

A day later, when many seemed surprised at her coach, Jaspal Rana’s, absence in the areas everyone could see, she alone knew where he was. He had become just another face in the crowd. He had moved away from everyone else’s sights, but she knew how to pick him out.

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The first-ever women’s Olympic medallist in shooting, Bhaker, smiled and said, “I had figured where he was sitting in the crowd.”

So, she kept looking in that precise direction whenever she needed to. “(Just) looking at him gives me courage.”

Ultimately, Bhaker finished third behind the Koreans Oh Ye-jin and Kim Ye-ji. The final began with eight shooters, who had made the grade a day earlier. All eight finalists got 20 shots each to begin with. Then with every set of two shots, one shooter was eliminated and the first to go was the leader from the qualifiers, Veronika Major. One by one they kept dropping away till there were just three, Ye-jin, Ye-ji and Bhaker.

Ye-jin was well ahead in total, but Ye-ji shot 10.5 to Bhaker’s 10.3 and grabbed the second place by the tiniest of margin to earn a place in the fight for the gold, which finally went to her own teammate Ye-jin.

Competing in 2021 Tokyo soon after breaking away from Rana, she failed to even make the final of the 10m Air Pistol and 25m Pistol at the Games.

She returned a ‘broken’ person and that made her turn to religion. She confesses she began chanting verses from the ‘Gita’ to calm herself while training and competing.

Then a little over 12 months ago in June 2023, Rana and Bhaker announced that they had ‘sorted out’ their differences. Rana declared that he would no longer be coaching the team, but only Bhaker.

Then Rana, a one-time prodigy who has four Asian Games gold and a bagful of Commonwealth Games gold, told her that Bhaker, like Arjuna, as advised by his mentor, Krishna, must look at ‘only the eye’ and not on the results. She did and she reaped the rewards.

On Sunday, a calm Bhaker, knew the colour of the medal she had just won could well have been yellow, but for one last shot. Yet she was happy to get an Olympic medal and said it was just the beginning. “I have more events to come,” she said.

The journey in her mind has not come to an end but has just begun.

Manu Bhaker became the first Indian shooter to win an Olympic medal since 2012. AP

She is just 22 and already has more gold medals than many bank vaults — nine from World Cups and some from World Championships, Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, Asian Championships, World University Games, Youth Olympics, and Junior World Cups.

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Athletes are taught to shut out all noise — audible or otherwise — when they are competing. They seem to look around without seeing, but deep inside they know what they are looking for. Sometimes it is ‘nothingness’ that calms them and sometimes a mere flick of the eyebrow says it all. And, then they keep challenging each other.

The relationship between Bhaker and Rana, who alternates between being a coach and a politician, is something like that. He calms her; helps her set targets and makes ‘small’ and ‘not-so-small’ bets to challenge her. If she gets the target, the coach pays up. If not, the ward does.

She smiles and says, “He makes training difficult, so this (the Games) was not as difficult.”

His working methods are different, she says. She revealed, “For example, we keep a goal (target). If I score less than that, I lose and pay some amount. That amount varies. Sometimes it is 40 euros per point or whatever is the currency of the country where we are training or competing.

“If the target is 582 and I shoot 578, it is 40 multiplied by four euros. Sometimes, he makes it even 400 euros,” she added.

And what happens to that amount? They donate it or buy things with it and distribute it around. It is fun.

Today, everything is hunky dory. But it was not always like that.

It is no secret that a relationship between a high-profile athlete and a high-profile coach is fraught with danger. The smallest of disagreements can lead to parting of ways and a lot of pain.

In 2021, the bond between Rana and Bhaker, then just 19 but already seen as a possible medallist in the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics, hit a roadblock. They parted ways just before her first Olympics.

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Bhaker had an eminently forgettable Games, and on top of that she also suffered a “pistol malfunction.”

The world for this prodigy was shattered.

“I did not know what to do or where to go,” she confessed, while speaking of the post-Tokyo period. Sometimes her supporters, and sometimes Bhaker herself felt that Rana was the reason she failed in Tokyo.

Thrust into wilderness after a life under the arc lights, Bhaker was ‘lost’

“In Tokyo I could not even expect things like that (pistol malfunction). Maybe it was my fault. Let the past be past. If I didn’t win, the thing was to learn from it.”

Winning this medal is a dream come true, not just for me but for everyone who has supported me. I am deeply grateful to the NRAI, SAI, Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports, Coach Jaspal Rana sir, Haryana government and OGQ. I dedicate this victory to my country for their incredible… pic.twitter.com/hnzGjNwUhv

With an Olympic medal strung around her neck, she admitted, “The feeling (now) is like being on top of the world.”

She quickly adds, “There will be highs and lows and you can’t be on the top all the time. After this (the medal) I have more events to compete in.”

Bhaker knows there is a summit to conquer, but she is no longer in a hurry. As she squares up for the next target, she adds, “We will handle whatever comes (our way), we will see about the outcome later.”