New Delhi: Young Manu Bhaker has long been regarded as a generational shooting talent and her brilliant effort to win bronze in the women’s 10m air rifle bronze at the Chateauroux on Sunday was vindication of those high expectations.
Bhaker, 22, qualified at the third spot on Saturday and carried that superb consistency into the final on Sunday where her position kept switching between second and third, never slipping below that.
She handed India’s first medal at the Paris Games – it was also India’s first Olympic medal from a woman shooter after Anjali Bhagwat (2000, Sydney) and Suma Shirur (2012, London) – and also ended an agonizing waiting for the country’s excellent bunch of shooters for an Olympic medal.
India won two shooting medals at London, but failed to climb the podium in 2016 Rio with a record 15-member contingent also failing to win any at 2021 Tokyo.
One major factor that helped Bhaker break the sequence was the way she bounced back after her Tokyo campaign as a teenager ended in disappointment, where a pistol malfunction left her in tears and wondering where her career was headed.
The young shooter then decided to reunite with coach Jaspal Rana after the pair had an acrimonious split in the Olympic cycle building up to Tokyo. The decision has worked, and Bhaker’s confidence was there for all to see at Chateauroux.
Rana, himself regarded as a generational shooting talent when he first grabbed headlines at the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games as a teenager, went on to become almost unbeatable in the non-Olympic centrefire pistol. Part of a phase where many young shooters rose to the top in India, Rana was the man to beat in successive Asian Games.
Although, he could not translate his immense talent into an event that would get him success at the Olympic arena, Rana always stood out for his confidence despite his outspoken nature which often saw run-ins with shooting officials. Ahead of the Paris Games, he was one of the few personal coaches to be accredited and that decision has been vindicated.
Manu Bhaker finished with an aggregate score of 221.7 in the final to claim bronze, behind South Korea’s Oh Ye Jin, who shot an Olympic record 243.2, and her compatriot Kim Yeji, who shot 241.3 eventually after having sealed at least a silver with a 10.5 to Bhaker’s 10.3.