No fairy-tale ending

Rohit Mahajan in Paris

Manu Bhaker, pistol specialist, alternated between pursed lips and her dazzling smile today, for the emotion she felt today was bittersweet.

I was trying my best to keep calm and try to do my best, but that was not enough. I’m glad that I’ve won two medals.
— Manu Bhaker

Whenever I see him in the lane, whenever I look at him, I feel more courage, more confident, I feel I cannot give up, I have to try my best. Jaspal sir, he does a great job in keeping me in the present. There was no such pressure of winning a third medal but I definitely wanted to do my best. — Manu Bhaker

Second in qualification in the 25m sports pistol final, Manu missed the bronze by a whisker today — she held the first position in the eight-woman final for a short while, and was placed tied-third with Hungary’s Veronika Major after eighth series of five shots each. Then ensued a shoot-off to decide the medallist, and Manu missed two of the five shots, and Veronika got four out of five. Victory for the Hungarian, by one shot!
Manu’s face fell, for her dream of a third bronze was broken rudely, in a shoot-off.
But reality hit her, and she smiled again — for she’s the most successful Indian shooter ever in terms of Olympics medals won; she’s also the first Indian shooter to enter the finals of all three events she contested at an Olympic Games.
As Manu’s dream of a third medal went up in smoke, nervousness was a factor, she said later. “I was trying my best to keep calm and try to do my best, but that was not enough,” Manu said. “I’m glad that I’ve won two medals.”
She was nervous, she said, but could remain calm due to her coach, Jaspal Rana. “Whenever I see him in the lane, whenever I look at him, I feel more courage, more confident, I feel I cannot give up, I have to try my best,” Manu said.
If you’d heard such words three years ago, you’d have fallen off your chair — that was the time of bitter acrimony between coach and athlete, mentor and mentee.
After failing to qualify for the 10m and 25m finals at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Manu, then 19, had blamed Rana. They had parted company before Tokyo, for Manu felt Rana wasn’t giving her enough attention.
Rana, hardly a youngster at 45 then, responded in the most puerile of fashions — after Manu’s mother texted him ‘mil gai khushi?’, Rana printed the message on a T-shirt and wore it at shooting ranges.
Manu’s performances dipped, and then she did the unthinkable — she crushed her ego and called Rana in June 2023, seeking a rapprochement.
Rana said yes. “What happened between us was not my fault, but it wasn’t her fault either,” Rana said in Paris, after Manu won the 10m air pistol bronze.
“Jaspal sir, he does a great job in keeping me in the present. There was no such pressure of winning a third medal but I definitely wanted to do my best and try to give, like great match, that’s all I was trying and well...” Manu, who likes to quote the Bhagwad Gita, like Rana, said.
Manu’s Paris success was the culmination of one of the most amazing stories of love and hate between a shooter and her mentor. Paris 2024 is over for Manu, but her poise and her humility, swallowing her pride to return to her coach, suggest that she would achieve great successes in the future.