It’s almost 6 pm on a rainy day in Delhi, and Manu Bhaker finally gets a moment to sit down for a meal. “My day started at 5 am today. The hotel was kind enough to pack some fruit before my flight,” she says, patiently waiting for rotis to accompany her paneer curry. The past 12 hours have been a whirlwind of activity: a flight to Chandigarh and back, numerous meetings, and felicitations. It’s all starting to blur together. In less than five hours, she has another flight to catch – this time, back to Paris. Bhaker has been named the Indian contingent’s flag bearer for the closing ceremony the following day. “I guess I can only sleep on the flight now? This stuff is harder than shooting,” she admits, finally taking a bite of her food.
Manu Bhaker isn’t just any other shooter. She’s a two-time Olympic medalist, a World Championship gold medalist, and a Commonwealth Games champion. Most athletes take a lifetime to achieve a fraction of these accomplishments, if at all. Bhaker achieved all of this in the span of just six days. She almost won a third medal in Paris, too, and was understandably distraught after missing out on a hat-trick. Remember, she’s only 22 years old, and Paris was her second Olympic Games.
Bhaker’s journey to the top wasn’t always smooth sailing. Touted for success since her triumphs at Junior World Cups and the Youth Olympics in 2018, she experienced a major setback at the Tokyo Olympics. As a teenager, she struggled in all three events, facing a weapon malfunction that derailed her Olympic debut. Returning from Japan as the poster child of disappointment, she contemplated giving up the sport altogether. Public fallout with her coach, Jaspal Rana, further complicated matters.
While on a break to heal from the emotional scars of Tokyo, Bhaker realized that her true healing could only happen at the shooting range. “I was holding up the electric kettle against the white wall of the hotel room in Kerala where I was vacationing with my family,” she recalls. “That’s when I felt, ‘Okay, enough is enough. I need to get back.'” It didn’t take long for Bhaker to recognize that moving forward required taking a few steps back. This meant letting go of past disappointments and reaching out to coach Rana for help. “There is something about the way we work together, it’s like magic. He brings out the best in me,” she said after her first medal in Paris, the individual bronze in the 10m Air Pistol event.
Both Rana and Bhaker have been known for their fiery personalities and unwavering determination. They both carry the label of “prodigy” from early on in their careers. What stood out for Rana, who had taken a sabbatical following the Tokyo Olympics, was the need to help Bhaker find a healthy work-life balance. “Nothing good comes out of overloading a child,” he says. “Yes, we are everything today because of shooting, but there’s a lot more to life.” The core focus of their Paris plan was to encourage Bhaker to detach herself from shooting once her training day was over.
Bhaker 2.0 embraced a new approach to life. After days of poor scores, she’d treat herself to foreign language movies for fun. She turned to the Bhagwad Gita, whose verses were read to her like stories by her meditation guru. She even picked up the autobiography of the fastest man on earth, Usain Bolt. “In my sport, you have to stand as still as you can, and for Bolt, it was about being faster than everyone else,” she says. “Very different sports, obviously, but there are always some similarities in every sportsperson’s journey.” Bhaker’s newfound sense of balance even included violin lessons. In many ways, the period between Tokyo and Paris was a time of growth and maturity for Manu Bhaker.
“What other option did I have?” she says. “I had to be courageous and find strength when I was at my lowest. I was not very confident in Tokyo and I made mistakes, but I wanted to leave all that behind and be remembered for doing something special for India.” India is undeniably grateful for Bhaker’s achievements. Shooting, once one of India’s most reliable medal disciplines, had gone silent since the 2012 Olympics. Questions about the sport’s high cost and lack of return on investment had started to surface. Bhaker’s medals in Paris silenced those critics and put India back on the world shooting map.
In Paris, Bhaker barely had time for a relaxed meal, let alone sightseeing. “I chose a single room because my routine was rigid, and that can be challenging for someone else living with me,” she says. Her week of history-making involved a grueling schedule: 5:30 am wake-up calls, yoga, breakfast, six to seven hours of intense training at the range (with a quick lunch squeezed in somewhere), followed by gym and physiotherapy sessions at the Athletes’ Village, and an online call with her guru to end the day. The only time she got to truly relax was during a video call with her family back in India.
Her drive to succeed was unwavering. On both days after her medal wins, she was back to her rigorous routine the following morning because, as she puts it, “the job hadn’t been done yet.” Her busy schedule meant she could only catch a glimpse of javelin champion Neeraj Chopra’s qualification rounds. But what she did soak up, both in person and online, was the inspiring camaraderie among the women athletes at the Games. “They could be rivals but also cheering and encouraging each other, which is a beautiful and powerful thing.”
Bhaker’s courage extends beyond the shooting range. She has been vocal in her support of her fellow athletes, standing up against online trolls who targeted PV Sindhu and speaking out in support of the wrestlers’ protest in Delhi. She’s a rare breed – an athlete who uses her platform to champion the rights and well-being of her fellow athletes.
Bhaker recalls a train journey from her childhood. Fellow passengers asked her where she was going. Young Bhaker replied, “Shooting ke liye jaa rahi hoon” (I’m going for shooting). She had to quickly clarify that she wasn’t referring to the cinema, but to the sport she played. With her accomplishments in Paris, Manu Bhaker has written a truly remarkable story, a story that’s far from over. There’s a sequel waiting to be written, and the world is eager to see what she does next.
