THE PISTOL QUEEN

PARIS 2024 WASN'T JUST ABOUT THE OLYMPIC MEDALS MANU BHAKER WON, IT WAS AS MUCH ABOUT THE DEMONS OF TOKYO 2020 THAT SHE EXORCISED. THE INSPIRING STORY OF A TRUE TURNAROUND CHAMPION

- SUHANI SINGH

ON A SUMMER EVENING in mid-2023, Manu Bhaker sat down for a heart-to-heart meeting with her former coach and mentor, Jaspal Rana, at Starbucks in Khan Market, New Delhi. It was their first meeting in almost two years, after an acrimonious split that would be the talk of the town just before the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She, then world ranked #2 in 10m air pistol, alleged he wasn't giving her enough attention. He, then the national team's pistol coach, said she wasn't his only priority and insisted she compete in only two events as opposed to three at the Tokyo Games. Come Olympics, Manu inexplicably faltered, unable to cope with the lofty expectations. Rana, unceremoniously sacked three months before the Games, took a chunk of the blame and the public ire for the India squad's lacklustre performance at Tokyo, which saw the much-hyped contingent return with zero medals.

That Starbucks meeting, then, was to become a memorable act of reconciliation and a game-changing behind-the-scenes moment in Indian sport. What exactly did Manu tell Rana? "I told him if I want to shoot, I want to shoot only with you," she recounts. "That I am thinking of leaving shooting altogether. That I'd been really trying a lot and it has been difficult. Hausla nahin bacha hai I don't have much courage left." Rana, otherwise known to be a stern taskmaster, melted.

"To call me in this kind of situation would not have been easy for anyone. If at that age, she could have that courage to call me, then I said I'll be up for it," says Rana. "There was nothing to lose. We had lost everything." He had only one precondition. "If we start digging up the past, a lot of things will come out, which will not be good for me, her or the country," Rana recalls telling her.