On Saturday, Sarabjot Singh missed out on reaching the final of the men's 10m air pistol final on his Olympic debut -- by one inner 10. The narrowest of margins in shooting.
He was naturally devastated, barely able to look at the camera. It was a bad day, he said, ending on a philosophical note: "First Olympics tha, experience acha mila." (it was my first Olympics, I got good experience)
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He was equally sage on Monday, after qualifying for the 10m air pistol mixed team with Manu Bhaker. When asked about the challenges of the medal match, he said: "Challenge kuch nahi hain, meri ladai mere khud se hi hain, bas apne technique pe kaam karunga," (there is no challenge, my fight is with myself, I will work on my technique.)
Two days later, that phlegmatism paid off when Sarabjot won his first Olympic medal.
A short sporting fairytale, from heartbreak to the podium in the span of days.
It was no fairytale run though, as Sarabjot visibly struggled with nerves. His first shot in the bronze medal match was a poor 8.6 (out of a maximum of 10.9.) At one point, coach Munkhbayar Dorjsuren came in and started shaking his shooting arm to relax it. Earlier, he had his arms folded as the coach instructed him, suggesting a nervy body language. He was seen several times sipping water and taking deep breaths before shots. He wasn't scoring as well as Manu, similar to qualification yesterday where the Indians missed the gold medal match by just one point.
Only 22, Sarabjot has not endured this kind of pressure before as Manu had. He had already stumbled in the final shot in his individual qualification and his wounds hadn't yet formed scar tissue.
When the time came, though, when the Indians had squandered two chances to clinch the medals, two match points so to speak, Sarabjot held his nerve and nailed his final shot -- a 10.2 to Manu's 9.4 -- to seal the podium spot.
The soft-spoken son of a farmer from Punjab, Sarabjot's shy persona hides the steel within. After all, he competes in the same category as Saurabh Chaudhary and Jitu Rai, both talented shooters whose careers were ended with Olympics heartbreaks.
That he made it shows his maturity in a sport that is as mental as it is physical. Speaking to the media after qualifying, he said he was going to treat it like any normal match. If you expect more, you feel the pressure, was his belief. He was off to training soon after, he said, to work on his technique.
The very technique that he said he needs work on after the individual final, where he admitted to losing focus after a perfect series of 100. To recalibrate mentally a day after your lower point takes a strength.
A product -- like most Indian shooters of his generation -- of the robust Indian junior shooting system, he announced himself in 2019 with a gold at the ISSF Junior World Cup in Suhl - a launchpad for India's top shooters. He had a run of medals at World Championships and World Cups in through 2019 and 2021, with the pandemic break in between.
At the senior level, he has his own share of big medals with three World Cup golds in the last two years -- two in men's 10m air pistols and one in mixed team with Divya TS. He also won the mixed team silver with Divya at last year's Asian Games. Most recently, he had medalled at the last ISSF World Cup before the Paris Games, leading from the start for a pole-to-flag gold medal.
So he had the form going in to the Games, and with the experience of his first qualification in Paris, heartbreaking as it was, he had the reality check of the level. He used it all to ensure he now also has that most valued metal of all in Indian sports -- an Olympic medal.