On the day that shooting sport action began at Paris Olympics, the biggest spotlight from India was on Manu Bhaker and her redemption arc. Not only had she qualified for her first Olympics final at her fourth attempt, becoming the first Indian woman shooter to make an Olympic final — in the 10m air pistol — in 20 years, she seemed to have somewhat put the ghost of Tokyo behind her.
For three years, the image associated with Manu was of her was being emotional at the Tokyo range, where she suffered a weapons malfunction after a solid start in qualification of the 10m air pistol event and narrowly missed on the final. She couldn’t make it to the medal matches in her other two events either and was at the centre of an ugly, widely publicised feud with her coach. It was a colossal amount of mental stress on a teenager.
Today, Manu Bhaker showed how she’d learnt from that. She started the qualification with a 9 – not the greatest of starts, and indicative of the immense pressure she was under.
But she responded with 5 straights 10s – inner 10s, which are the differentiator in case of a tie — and a first series of 97. Her next five series were 97, 97, 98, 96, 96, 96, enough to qualify in third place for Sunday’s final.
This was classic clutch shooting. Not a single shot under 9 till the fifth series, where there was one solitary 8. She had 27 inner 10s — the most in the field — in her total of 580.
Shooting qualification is not broadcast anywhere, but the visual story is told via the groupings of shots. Manu’s first three series have an eye-catching, centre-focussed grouping that tell you just how strongly she started. The first three series almost assured her of a spot in the final, and despite a smaller number in the second half, she had done enough to bury some of the terrible Tokyo memories.
When Manu Bhaker was in the same position in Tokyo, making her Olympic debut, she was about a shot away from the final. But a malfunction in her gun meant she lost close to 20 minutes and missed qualifying for the final by a margin of two points. It was a heartbreaking miss that had a cascading effect and she couldn’t make a mark with Saurabh Chaudhary in the 10m air pistol mixed team, their pet event. She didn’t do well in the 25m pistol either.
In the final — at 3.30 PM — Manu Bhaker will face one of the top fields in women’s pistol. The other finalists are China’s reigning world champion Jiang Ranxin and Li Xue, who won the World Cup Final in Doha last year, Baku World Cup medallist Kim Yejin and Oh Ye Jin of South Korea and pistol veteran Veronika Major and Vietnam’s Trinh Thu Vinh along with Turkey’s Sevval Ilayda Tarhan, who holds the national and European junior record.
It’s a largely Asian field and Manu had not taken part in air pistol at the Asian Games last October, where Palak Gulia and Esha Singh had finished 1-2.
But Manu Bhaker has done what Palak and Esha couldn’t, come through the rigorous, four-stage Olympic Selection trials. As many top shooters have said, the two-city, four-stage trials fought among the top 5 Indians were tougher than most international competitions. And Manu came through in two disciplines to become the only Indian shooter to compete in more than one event.
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