Manu Bhaker: Heavy heart, steely hand

New Delhi: “Irreparable damage,” was how Manu Bhaker reacted to the sudden demise of her coach Jaspal Rana three months ago. Think of it. Just days before the former pistol ace’s death at 49, Manu and Jaspal were together on a flight, on the range, planning, training and discussing shooting.

Workload balance, fine-tuning technique, mental preparation, high-pressure competitions, weather, food, sleep—everything has to be factored in for a high-class performance. Behind the scenes, the coach keeps an eye on an athlete’s life. Manu and Jaspal had the Asian Games in sight, then the World Championships and an LA Olympics quota opportunity later this year. That’s the life of an elite athlete and coach. It revolves so much around sport and performance that there was hardly enough time for anything else.

In the last week of May, they travelled to Munich together. There, the Paris Olympics pistol medallist partnered Samrat Rana to claim silver in the mixed team event after a final against China’s Yao Qianxun and Hu Kai, who sealed gold by a mere 0.3 points. A tense, draining final on the last day of the championships came with Jaspal sitting behind Manu in the coach’s corner. It was the last time they would be on the range together.

Back on the flight to India, Jaspal fell sick, complaining of severe chest pain. On landing in Delhi, he was admitted to hospital. About a week later, he passed away, leaving the shooting fraternity stunned.

Manu did not know how to process the loss. Jaspal had left a big void. The shooting range would not feel the same again without him, she said. Jaspal was not just a coach to her, but also a mentor and friend. He played a key role in Manu’s unprecedented success in the French capital that saw her win two bronze medals.

Life moves on, and so did Manu, getting back to the comforting sound of pellets. The heart may still be empty, the mind chaotic, but she quickly realigned herself into training and competition with the Asian Games fast approaching. The ISSF World Cup in Hangzhou in July last week was a final opportunity to test herself before heading to Aichi-Nagoya.

The steely resolve was back. Manu was on the podium, winning a World Cup bronze in 25m pistol. It is the kind of peaking an elite shooter prepares for ahead of a major competition. There was no Jaspal to share the moment, dissect her game and mentality at the competition. But she was on the right track. After a talk with high-performance director Pierre Beauchamp, Manu chose Serbian coach Jelena Arunovic as her new coach. It is a new combination and will take time to develop.

“Mentally, she’s very strong,” says Ronak Pandit, coach and high-performance manager for the Indian pistol team who has worked with the 24-year-old in the past.

“She doesn’t give up no matter whatever the situation around her. Every time the chips were down, she has fought back and come out stronger and better. I have seen her transition since she was a kid, over the last eight-nine years,” Pandit told HT. “When you feel that everything is against her, she will come out with the strongest of performances. That is the resilience, killer instinct and fighting spirit she displays.”

Controlling one’s emotions is essential to performance on the ground. More so in shooting where the mind wavers, the heart rate shoots up, and even the tiniest movement of a finger on the trigger can be the difference between a good and bad shot, a perfect 10.9 and a 9, winning and losing. In a still position, holding the pistol, it is the thoughts in a shooter’s mind that need to be calmed first, allowing the process and technique to take over.

“In shooting, it’s about how to use your emotions, mental skills, effectively to transfer it into a meaningful technical execution. No matter how hardworking or resilient you are internally, if you are technically good and follow the process, you see the results coming. Manu has that ability to bring it all down to good execution,” says Pandit, a Commonwealth Games medallist.

No matter how much you prepare in sport, it has a habit of springing surprises, much like life. Manu has seen both ends of it. Pandit was Manu’s coach at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and saw how she fought obstacles and criticism around her performance and off-field controversy. She was running with a malfunctioning pistol on the range when the competition was on. So calm and collected was she, along with Pandit, that she came back after putting a few nuts and bolts of her pistol back in place, almost qualifying for the final. It required great determination and the ability to stay in the present. She soaked in the pressure like a sponge. She was 19.

A medal eluded her in Tokyo. She had gone there as a promising star shooter—competed in three events—one who would return with medals, given how fearlessly she had been making podium finishes. A fallout with coach Jaspal was made public and the scrutiny intensified.

Manu came back home. After Tokyo, when she was in search of the spark, the firepower that could ignite her mind as results were not coming as expected, the only person she could think of as her coach was Jaspal, who had guided her since her teenaged days as the national junior team coach.

Jaspal was aware of how Manu’s mind worked and how to get the best out of her on the range. He knew when to push her, when to cajole her, when to be a friend, when to show her the mirror. She ruminated for some days and made up her mind.

If she decides, she doesn’t look back. A call went to Jaspal. The maverick coach agreed in an instant. It was the start of an extraordinary journey leading up to Manu winning the Olympic medals. It is the kind of redemption story that makes sport so fascinating because it makes you believe in real-life turnarounds.

“She didn’t get distracted by the noise. She has taken some very hard decisions. Not worrying about what the world would say. So, she carefully chose what was right for her without falling prey to any other thing. And she made the right decision, stuck to it, gave it her all,” says Pandit.

Samaresh Jung, the former international and now coach with the pistol team, says a strong desire to win sets her apart. Despite new faces coming up and challenging the established lot in domestic competition, Manu has been a constant presence on the senior team since 2018. “At this level, when you have established yourself, it’s not much about the technique, which you keep refining, but about hard work, discipline and determination. She is the strongest of the present lot and that’s why she is consistent,” says Jung.

Jaspal’s absence will remain a void for Manu. But there are competitions, and challenges ahead. Manu knows what it takes to come back from difficult phases. She has done it before. She has to do it again, knowing nothing would have made Jaspal prouder.