Watching a shooter go through his drills can be boring and bemusing. The subtle tilts of the neck, the super slow motion in which the arm comes down in perfect alignment with feet apart precisely for balance — the nuances can be hard to follow for non-experts watching. Divyansh Singh Panwar would be fooling around with fellow shooters, but when it is time to shoot, the transformation to begin the meditative process is immediate.
Days before the Indian squad’s departure for the Grenada World Cup, Divyansh was all poise and perfection at Delhi’s Karni Singh Shooting Range. He positions himself ten feet away from the firing station and does dry shooting — aligning his arm with the target without holding the weapon. He slips into the puffed costume, strapping on his jacket, fixing the eyepiece and tightening the shoelaces. All the shenanigans are worth it when one looks at the series the 10m air rifle shooter achieves: 10.6, 10.7, 10.8. This gradual progression towards perfection is, in a way, indicative of Divyansh’s redemption story that’s still growing.
Three years back, Divyansh went to the Tokyo Olympics as a long-haired 18-year-old world No.1, world record holder and a top medal contender. He finished 32nd at the Akasa Shooting Range, a shock that required him to retreat for a two-week vipassana course in Rishikesh.
In the period leading up to last month’s World Cup in Cairo where Divyansh won his first senior World Cup gold medal with a world record score, the now 21-year-old has worked on various aspects of his game. A pronounced arched back in his stance is a lot straighter, he shoots with a new rifle and has worked on his timing. And that’s just the technical part.
With no wins post Tokyo, retaining belief in his abilities was the biggest challenge, says national coach Suma Shirur.
“We can’t teach shooters to shoot at this stage. It is all about little, often invisible, changes that make all the difference,” she says. For Divyansh, the changes stand out. His stance with an arched back worked very well in his early years, but the Indian coaching staff felt it affected his shooting in close competitions.
“The arched stance worked very well for him at domestic level but in pressure situations when your body begins to get tense, it puts extra stress on the lower back, which begins to affect concentration,” she says. The process to tweak his stance began soon after Shirur took charge of the senior rifle team in 2022.
“At times, it is tough to convince a shooter that whatever has been working for him till that point needs to change. It helped that Divyansh was all ears.” The work began with 1mm change every month. The muscle memory honed over years of practice takes time to undo. In Divyansh’s case, it is an ongoing process.
The next stop was his weapon. A year back, the Indian rifle contingent tried out Austrian-made Steyr rifles. All but Divyansh reverted to their previous rifles. “It’s a lot about feel. He felt the weight distribution and trigger feel were better. Remember, he was not doing too well at that stage, so persisting with a new weapon needed trust and courage.”
Divyansh then went to the Hangzhou Asian Games in a star-studded squad and guided India to a men’s team gold. The individual medal still eluded him. He finished eighth in qualification after coming back from a poor start but with compatriots Rudrankksh Patil and Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar having made the final ahead of him, he had to sit out. A maximum of two shooters from a country shoot in the final.
“It was disappointing, but I guess I need to get better. All I can say is I will come back stronger,” a crestfallen Divyansh had told HT in Hangzhou as he watched China’s Sheng Lihao take gold with a then world record score of 253.3.
“It is easy to compare his performance pre- and post-Tokyo, but he was a teenager then and is an adult now. The physical growth should also be taken into account,” Shirur says. Divyansh now stands taller and broader, and in a sport decided by millimetres, every tiny change counts. “The results in pre-21 age-group and post-21 may vary a lot simply because your body changes so much. Also, there are a lot of emotional changes that affect your breathing pattern.”
Indian coaches worked on his timing — the time a shooter takes from completing a shot to exhaling and shooting again. Coaches reckoned that Divyansh was taking too long and that gap allowed doubts to creep in during tense finals. “Timing is very relative and personal and not all shooters have the confidence to try and change it. We also started working on his body language, which is why you’ll see him strutting around confidently, irrespective of the results.”
The shooting team now heads to Grenada, Spain where Divyash’s new approach will again be put to test. Having made a successful return to form in the Olympic year, the stage is set for a rivetting contest between Divyansh, Patil, Babuta and Tomar for the two Paris tickets.