Tokyo 2020: Shooters miss the Olympic target

Saurabh Chaudhary, 19, has never left an international competition without a medal since he started shooting at the senior level in 2019. But on Tuesday, Chaudhary, left the Asaka shooting range in Tokyo having ended his Olympic campaign without a podium finish.

It was a day when tension gripped the Indian shooting contingent, turned to disappointment and then morphed into anger as coaches, administrators and shooters revealed the cracks in the team.

The shooters went into the Games as some of India’s strongest medal contenders. Not just because a shooting medal has come from every Olympics, barring Rio 2016, since Rajyavardhan Rathore’s double trap silver in 2004, or because it is the only sport where India has won a gold medal, but also because this was a team with young talent who have won international medals by the handfuls.

The disappointments began from the first day of the Olympics, where Elavenil Valarivan and Apurvi Chandela, who have both held world No 1 ranks in the last two years, failing to move out of qualification in 10m air rifle. On the same day, in 10m air pistol, Chaudhary made the 8-shooter final but finished 7th. The next day, the shooters in the 10m air rifle men’s and 10m air rifle women’s also stumbled in the qualification rounds.

Yet, there was promise. Chaudhary and Manu Bhaker, who is also 19, have been the most dominant pistol mixed team pair in the world since the event was introduced in global competitions in 2019 and on Tuesday hopes were high that they would leave their disappointments in individual events behind them with a medal in their strongest event. The morning began well for them.

Bhaker and Chaudhary topped the first stage of qualification (30 shots by each person in 30 minutes) with a score of 582; Saurabh fired 296, Manu 286. They were eighth among 20 teams who advanced to the second stage (40 shots in 20 mins). Chaudhary had a good run, but Bhaker shot four 8s, two of those coming in her last five shots, and the duo settled for 380 points and were out of the final.

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A few hours later, Divyansh Panwar and Elavenil Valarivan made early exits in the rifle mixed team events, as did Anjum Moudgil and Deepak Kumar.

It brought back memories of 2016, when India’s seasoned shooting team failed to bag a single medal.

“This has been a disappointment. Barring Saurabh (Chaudhary), no one put up a fight,” said Joydeep Karmakar, who had missed a medal by the thinnest of margins, finishing fourth in 50m rifle prone in 2012. “Saying that it was one bad day in office doesn’t cut it when that day happens in the Olympics. Because there is no guarantee you will be back. Also, why are we highlighting that they are kids? Yes, they are young but they earned the quota place on merit fighting with older players. When you stand in the lane there are no kids, no elders, only competitors.”

Coaches with the team in Tokyo said that one of the problems is that between the personal coaches of the shooters and the national coaches, there are too many conflicting inputs for the shooters.

"You can't start working with a shooter on the day of the Olympics,” said one coach who did not wish to be named. “They have been working with their personal coaches."

There is also the issue of no psychologist travelling with the team.

“There was a psychologist, physio and all the coaching staff in Osijek (in Croatia, where the team prepared for two months for the Games),” said Raninder Singh, the president of the National Rifle Association. “It is not possible to get everyone here because of Covid restrictions.”

Karmakar said that the lack of medals pointed to the preparations not being right.

“The problem is not technical. We have good coaches for that and the players too are very aware now. But were the players trained to peak at the right time? Coaches need to know and work on that,” he said. “Create hunger, get into the flow state phase where you come closest to cutting out all the noise. Even the best will fail if that is not done. Most shooters, including Manu (Bhaker) today, found the pressure of an Olympics final suffocating.

I think a high-performance coach has a big role to play. For Paris, that coach can be appointed maybe one year prior to the Games but the coach has to help steel the athlete, get the athlete to work with robotic efficiency, control his or her emotions.”

Bhaker, after the mixed team event, admitted that she was not in the right zone, even as she and Chaudhary answered questions with great poise.

“Sometimes you don’t have control over things when you try way too hard or expect things,” Bhaker said.

When asked how the Olympic experience was different for them, Chaudhary said “I’ve participated at the Youth Olympics before this. There’s nothing different here. Games Village hai, wohi range hai, target hai, pistol hai, hum hai, goli hai. (there is a Games Village, a range, a target, pistols, bullets, and us.”

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