Anirudh Menon
Jul 30, 2024, 03:41 PM
Manu Bhaker, double Olympic medalist at Paris 2024.
Hold on here. Read that first sentence again. Let it sink in. It's a sentence independent India has never seen: two medals at a single Games. History, capital H.
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She may only be 22, but she's taken the long route to get here. Hers is a story of belief that had started when, aged 15, she'd won the national title and broken the national record in the process. It was reinforced when she won Commonwealth Games gold later that year, but it had all taken a massive bruising at the Tokyo Olympics. Aged 19, she was put under the kind of pressure that few people ever experience.
A year after that nightmare, Manu had told ESPN that she'd been reading 'The subtle art of not giving a ****' and taking inspiration from it -- seeking happiness, reinforcing her own beliefs. "Right now, there's nothing that makes me happy as much as shooting," she had said. "As long as it keeps me happy, I'll keep shooting."
"There's no guidebook you get at the start of your athletic career explaining how to deal with failure," she had said then. "But I don't have any real regrets. I chose this life and by that I didn't just choose the medals and fame but everything else that comes with it. I can't complain about just the bad parts of it. This is a path I very willingly decided to walk on."
She had then added to that philosophical perspective on her career by taking the phrase 'Still I Rise' -- from Maya Angelou's poem of the same name, and now tattooed on her neck-quite literally, and burying herself in what made her happy. The result of that is what we see now.
But now that's done. That narrative, that story. She's taken that tale of redemption, fantastic as it is, and beaten it into submission. Choker? Please. "Too emotional" (as a former coach had once written about her in a diary)? Okay. The face of Tokyo's failure becoming the shining crown of Paris' success? Alright. Redemption arc? Completed like you've never seen before.
It fits with the attitude she ascribed to herself a couple of days, of doing your 'karma' and leaving the rest to the powers that be. 'Do your best with what you can control.' All that, though, was done with that first bronze. This second one has elevated her to a whole new level.
On Tuesday, she followed her own personal philosophy to the T. She hit only three shots below 10 in 13 and outscored her partner Sarabjot Singh 131.5-129.8. Often (rather hilariously) accused of being carried by Saurabh Chaudhary when the duo was winning every World Cup medal available to them, here she was nailing shot after shot under the most intense pressure. Winning and losing may all be part of sport, but she wasn't going to be the reason the team suffered the latter.
The facts around the medal underline just how historic an achievement it is for Indian sport: not just her being the first since Independence to win multiple medals in the same Games, but her being just the third - after Sushil Kumar and PV Sindhu - to win more than one individual medal across any Games. For a nation that demands excellence of any promising talent, we've not won quite enough for someone to go 'look at that person, be like that person.'
Now we do.
Bhaker's two bronzes are just the start. If Abhinav Bindra's gold inspired a generation to pick up a gun and Neeraj Chopra's win told a nation to believe in itself, what Bhaker has done is raised the bar. This is a nation of multiple medallists now. Where other countries take to the pool and the gym floor for multiple medals, India can look at shooting. The intense domestic competition, the multiple world-class shooters, it's all there.
Suma Shirur, India's rifle high performance coach, had once told this writer that the national team's internal training sessions were often tougher than international competitions, that no one ever wanted to come second. But that had not translated at the biggest stage of them all. And now they have an example of serial success at the highest level.
No more excuses, no more hypotheticals. There's a human face to the example, and two tangible medals hanging around her neck (with one event to go for her). 'Look at Manu Bhaker, be like Manu Bhaker.'
Even as we get ready for that, the nation now basks in the reflected glory of Manu Bhaker's greatness, and it does so in a shade India has never seen before. Two bronzes, together, giving off a hue that would make even gold envious.
