An Olympic bronze medal finish is the highest point in Jhajjar woman Manu Bhaker's short but intense career

Gaurav Kanthwal 

Chandigarh, July 28

Shooter Manu Bhaker’s bronze medal win in the women’s 10m air pistol event of the 2024 Paris Olympics is the highest point in her short but intense career with many ups and downs till now.

The 22-year-old Goria, Jhajjar, shooter shot 221.7 to win the bronze medal at the Chateauroux Shooting Centre in Paris on Sunday. With this, she became the first Indian woman pistol shooter to open the medal count in Paris Olympics. Manu is also the first woman shooter in 20 years since Suma Shiroor (2004 Athens Olympics) to enter the individual final of this event.

In the qualification round, Manu finished third (580) in the low scoring event with 27 inner 10s, the most in a field of 44 competitors.

Paris Olympics is a moment of crowning glory in her shooting career but it has come after fighting the demons of failure every day for the past three years.

It is a redemption song for the shooter who bowed out teary-eyed from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 with a weapon malfunction in the qualification round and a meltdown later.

“It took a longtime for me to get over the Tokyo disappointment. The entire team has worked so hard for the past three years,” she said to the broadcaster after her win.

Just eight years after taking up the sport, the 2020 Arjuna awardee has an Olympics bronze. On what was going on in her mind during the final moments, Manu said, “I read a lot of Bhagavad Gita and focused on my process, not the result.”

Her shooting story began in early 2016 when she took up the sport on her father Ramkishen Bhaker’s insistence at Universal Senior Secondary School in Goria, Jhajjar. In just one year, the Class XI girl became the national champion in all three categories – youth, junior and women – of the 10m air pistol event.

The school owner and Manu’s uncle Mahendra Singh said, “The family and near and dear ones are ecstatic. Around 15-30 TV channel reporters have reached here. Manu did her schooling here. She started shooting here at a range in the school in 2016. At that time, 60-70 kids used to train here under Anil Jakhar. From 2013 to 2016, our school has won many national-level medals.”

A year later, Manu grabbed the headlines by beating former world number one Heena Sidhu to clinch the title in the 2017 shooting nationals.

In Thiruvananthapuram, the venue for the 2017 shooting nationals, the shooter became a show-stopper as she bagged 11 medals in different categories.

In her first year in international shooting in 2017, Manu began with the junior and youth gold at the Kumar Surendra Singh Memorial Shooting Championship. She also got the Youth Olympic Games quota at the 10th Asian Airgun Championship in Wako City, Japan, where she won silver in the youth category.

Back home, Manu bettered it in the shooting nationals with a score of 240.5 for the gold, a new national record. In the junior category too, Manu shot 240.2 to break the national record. The senior national gold came with a record-breaking 242.3, beating former world number one Heena Sidhu (240.6).

In 2018, Manu led Haryana’s shooting contingent with a record-breaking gold in the Khelo India School Games (31 January to 8 February) to be crowned overall champions.

Explaining her instant success in shooting sport, Manu had told The Tribune that “from childhood I had a liking for games that tested my physical strength”.

Cricket, basketball, kabaddi, lawn tennis, boxing, kick-boxing, swimming, karate and Thang-Ta (sword combat) — a martial art of Manipur — Manu has played them all. She has won medals in boxing, swimming and Thang-Ta at the national-level tournaments.

Father Ramkishen Bhaker, a marine engineer, has pushed his daughter and son to play sports along with focusing on studies. “I have always encouraged my children to try different sports. I made sure that they were playing one sport or the other even as they studied,” he said recently.

Driving a tractor in the farms, riding horses, skating and painting are her favourite pastimes.

Mother Sumedha Bhaker, a schoolteacher, said, “She played every sport with all her heart and mind. But shooting is her passion now.”

The 10m air pistol shooter won the gold with a Games record in the 2018 Goldcoast Commonwealth Games in Australia. She won the gold and silver in the Baku (2023) and Cairo (2022) World Championships in the 25 m pistol team events and the women’s 25m pistol gold at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games. But the individual gold count dried up after the Tokyo setback. A patch-up with her junior days’ coach Jaspal Rana put her back on track.

With the Paris Olympics bronze, Manu has shot herself back in the reckoning. “I have two more events to go. Hope to do well in them,” she said.