‘Shut up and sleep’: Esha’s mother’s advice that helped her win a second Asian Games silver in shooting

Esha Singh won silver in women’s 25m pistol individual final. | Photo Credit: PTI

The night before the second day of competition in the 25m pistol event at the Asian Games, Esha Singh was unable to sleep.

The pressure had been building for days. She had arrived at Nagoya as the World No. 1 and world-record holder in the event. She was no longer the teenager who had gone to Hangzhou three years earlier and returned with multiple medals. This time, expectations followed her everywhere. And so far, she wasn’t living up to them.

So, when she called her mother, Srilatha, late at night, she was perhaps looking for some sympathy. Instead, she got a scolding.

Srilatha is a no-nonsense Hyderabadi who managed the family’s sporting goods store while her husband, former rally driver Sachin, and Esha were away pursuing her shooting career.

“She basically told me to shut up and go to sleep,” Esha said, laughing after winning silver in the 25m pistol. “Mom was like, ‘Why are you thinking this is so stressful? Just enjoy yourself. Not everybody gets this opportunity.’”

It wasn’t exactly what Esha wanted to hear, but it was precisely what she needed.

“I slept right after that. I don’t think I had an option,” Esha recalled.

The next day, she needed every bit of that perspective because the 25m pistol final became an exercise in survival and an exhibition of drama.

Deafening shots rang out, cartridges flew all over the range, cheers went up for the green lights signifying successful hits, and sighs followed the red lights showing misses. Esha fired so many rounds that her hand cramped.

Over the course of the day, she was on the brink of elimination four separate times — including three times in the final. In theory, a shooter can win a 25m pistol final with 50 shots. Esha eventually fired 75.

On three separate occasions in the final, she was trailing a higher-placed shooter and had to make up ground with one series of five shots. On five separate occasions — three with North Korea’s Kim Hyon Suk and two with China’s Xiao Jiaruixuan — she was involved in a shoot-off, a series of five shots used to separate shooters tied on the same score.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve seen three shoot-offs a few times, and once four. But I’ve never seen five. It’s got to be a first, at least in the Asian Games,” said fellow Indian shooter Anish Bhanwala.

There was even a goof-up by the referee — a stoppage during a shoot-off when only four shots had been fired instead of five — adding to the chaos.

Cutting through the noise was the loud baritone of Esha’s father, alternately yelling at the judges and trying to keep his daughter motivated.

Eventually, in her fifth shoot-off — and second for the gold medal — Xiao edged ahead 3-2 to take the gold.

Esha had come agonisingly close. But what she hadn’t realised was how close she had come to not making the final at all.

She had qualified eighth with a score of 580. One place lower and that would have been the end of her competition.

Olympic champion Yang Ji-in of South Korea was in ominous form, looking set for a score in the high 580s. Then, with her 21st shot of the day, in the rapid-fire section of the competition where shooters had three seconds to fire each shot, she failed to register a score within the allotted time.

She eventually dropped from first place to 17th.

Just because of that, by the barest of margins, Esha squeaked in.

Esha didn’t initially know about that lucky break in qualification, but she was more than aware of every time she was forced into sudden death during the final. There were moments when she could feel the competition slipping away.

“I was very aware of that. It’s very distracting to think, ‘I’m going to go out any second.’”

She willed herself not to let the thought overwhelm her.

“I still kept my focus on it. I still knew I could do it. I fought my heart out. I tried my best,” she said.

Eventually, the sheer number of shots began to take a physical toll. Her hand became tight and tired. By the end, it was cramped and hurting badly.

“My hand was genuinely getting very, very tight and very tired without me realising. I train more than double what I shot, but probably the muscles work differently when you’re under so much anxiety and pressure. Even though you feel you have a firm grip, you try to keep it even more tight. So doing that for so many shots, it really takes a toll on your muscles and your fingers,” she said.

The strange breaks in the competition — like the one during her second shoot-off with North Korea’s Kim Hyon Suk, when a range official stopped shooting after four shots instead of five — gave her unexpected time to recover.

“People might say that I was at a disadvantage because it broke my momentum. But I was kind of grateful for the errors and mistakes the judges were making because I got some rest. Maybe you can call God’s grace giving me some time off,” she said.

The medal was Esha’s second Asian Games individual medal in the 25m pistol, after her silver in Hangzhou.

But she felt this one differently.

“This was something I had to really strive for,” she said. “This has a different kind of satisfaction because I know how much I had to fight to stay on in the match.”

That was perhaps what made this medal different from the ones she won in Hangzhou.

She had come to Nagoya with a reputation she did not have three years ago. In Hangzhou, she had been an 18-year-old prodigy who collected four medals, including individual silver in the 25m pistol and gold in the team event. Now she was the world No. 1. There was extra weight that came with that status.

“When you have titles, the weight also grows on you,” she said.

The pressure, she admitted, was greater than it had been in Hangzhou.

“I had a lot of pressure, I’m not going to lie,” she said.

The change was not simply about the scores or the competition. Esha felt that the atmosphere around her had changed.

This was especially so after the qualification round of the women’s 10m air pistol event. India had been widely expected to challenge for the title. Esha had been expected to make the final at the very least. Neither happened.

What bothered Esha was how the failure changed the way some people around her responded to her. Not on social media — her father had astutely replaced her smartphone with a nine-year-old Nokia brick a month earlier — but around her.

“The dynamics of the surroundings changed a lot. I guess I listened to a few conversations I wasn’t supposed to. The way I was treated was so different. But it felt like I’m here to win medals and I’m nothing more,” she said.

She went back and reminded herself why she had chosen shooting in the first place.

“I don’t owe anybody anything. I don’t play for anybody. I chose the sport because I love it. I chose it because it gives me a passion towards it, and that is why I play,” she said.

She repeated the thought to herself constantly.

Her coach Ronak Pandit tried to encourage her as well.

“He could see that I was becoming too serious and he tried to get me to relax. He would tease me and pull my leg. He joked that I wasn’t that special, that I wasn’t some queen who could never lose,” she said.

Pandit’s approach went beyond trying to make her laugh. He deliberately tried to take her mind away from the competition and the pressure surrounding it.

“We avoided focusing on ‘what happens tomorrow’, because that creates doubt and fear of failure. Instead, we discussed what changes we needed to make over the next year so that we wouldn’t face these issues again,” Ronak said.

“We talked about handling tough moments — when a match starts and a few shots don’t go as planned despite good preparation. The key was to keep faith, avoid panic and stay calm. So our long-term planning for the next year had already begun during those rides.”

There was also plenty of conversations that had nothing to do with shooting.

Pandit has a 2–3-year-old daughter, so they talked a lot about her, with whom Esha would share stories from her childhood. “Whenever my daughter called from home, we would video call together to keep the mood positive.”

“We chatted about what Esha was like as a child, talked about her clothes and nails, and how important nail art is to Gen Z. I’m a millennial, born in 1985, and she is Gen Z, so there was a lot of playful leg-pulling about millennial versus Gen Z mindsets.”

This relaxed approach extended to the more ordinary parts of life, too.

Esha is very picky about her food, so Ronak and the team made sure she had good, heavy meals at restaurants. “For instance, yesterday we left for the range at 7 am and returned to the hotel around 6 pm. When we got back, she was confused about whether she should eat lunch or dinner, especially with gym sessions still lined up. We decided on a light dinner,” he said.

It was all part of keeping the atmosphere around Esha as uncomplicated as possible.

All of it helped, but not much as that call with her mother.

Although it was being broadcast live, Srilatha herself didn’t watch the match.

“She doesn’t watch Esha’s matches when they happen. She usually waits until they get over,” said Sachin.

For all the tough talk she had given Esha herself, Srilatha usually couldn’t stand the nerves of watching her daughter compete.

And certainly not a final like the one Esha had contested on Monday.

She wouldn’t be the only one.

“I don’t think I was the only one who was under pressure in the final. Everyone else was as well. That’s probably why we were having so many shoot-offs,” Esha said.

But if there was pressure, Esha survived it longer than almost everyone.

And now she had another Asian Games silver to show for it. She said she would present it to her mother. But what she would treasure even more was the experience of competing in a match she had once dreaded.

As nerve-wracking as it was, Esha said she wouldn’t trade the opportunity to compete in the encounter for anything. Probably not even for a good night’s sleep.

“It was amazing. I’ve never had an experience like this before,” she said.

Published on Sep 28, 2026

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