"Whenever I see him in the lane, whenever I look at him, I feel more courage, more confident, I feel I cannot give up, I have to try my best." - Manu Bhaker on her coach Jaspal Rana.
Manu Bhaker returns from the Paris Olympics as India's first ever double medalist at a singles Games. On Saturday, she came within a shootoff of winning one more. The term historic is often overused to the point of redundancy, but Manu's week of the handful of Indian sporting achievements that are historic, this is most certainly that. There was one person behind her unprecedented success, who gave her this courage, this confidence: her personal coach, Jaspal Rana.
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Their collaboration for Paris was, in one sense, the perfect match. The most talented shooter of her generation being coached by (as Abhinav Bindra once put it) the most talented shooter of his. It was a no-brainer and guaranteed success. But to those who follow the sport, it was a partnership unimaginable after the events of the past couple of years - specifically after the Tokyo Olympics.
The pair, coach and protégé in the run-up to that Games, had a very bitter and very public falling-out - so bruising that any rapprochement seemed impossible. Rana, forever the enfant terrible of Indian shooting, was in the wilderness and Bhaker, her reputation and confidence severely dented, working under the radar.
But here they are, together again, with two Olympic medals and a place in history sealed. And in the story of protégé returning to coach lies the secret of arguably Indian shooting's greatest Olympic achievement.
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The fallout of the falling-out was felt at the Tokyo Games, but the actual fight was before the Games. The root cause of their divide was Rana's suggestion to Bhaker that she not take part in the 25m pistol event at Tokyo: he believed she was too young to put herself through the rigours of three events at the Olympics, but she felt it was because Rana was favouring another shooter, Chinki Yadav.
The issue boiled over a few months before the Olympics started: after Bhaker lost a 25m World Cup final to Yadav, Rana texted her asking if "she had found peace". And then bizarrely printed out the message (and her replies) on a T-shirt and wore it at the range. Rana was relieved of his job as national coach before Tokyo, and we know what came of Bhaker's Tokyo campaign.
Post-Tokyo - in fact, within days of the shooting competition - the fight was the subject of national debate, with both protagonists speaking their mind. "[Rana] violated my trust," Bhaker said; he didn't pay her enough attention, he favoured other shooters. Rana responded saying that he was, at the time, the national coach and not anyone's personal coach and his responsibilities were far more wide-ranging.
When Bhaker, her performance markedly below her previous highs, decided to reboot, she knew the secret to unlocking her full potential lay with the multiple CWG and Asian Games winning pistol shooter. Ego has no place in the quest for sporting success.
Several people close to her advised her against reuniting with Rana. Temperamental and a maverick, Rana had never been a favourite with the establishment, but Bhaker knew what had to be done, and so on June 14, 2023, she picked up her phone and rang up the man who'd made her the shooter she was.
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"If I was in her place," Rana told Sportstar just before the Games, "I wouldn't have called me."
But he knew what the response was. "I just said 'yes'," Rana told Business Today after Bhaker's first medal. "She is the one who took the first step. I can't think how much courage she must have had to call me and ask for my help. What happened between us was not my fault, but it wasn't her fault either."
"If she could find it in her to overcome whatever ego she might have felt, how could I have refused to work with her?"
Perhaps it was at this moment that he remembered how alike they were: volatile, emotional, quick to make decisions and to take affront based on them. And supremely talented shooters.
Bhaker, having fallen out of love with shooting after the Olympics, felt like she'd been going through the motions and knew that she needed to rediscover her passion. Rana helped, taking her back to the days she first made the sport her life, mixing up training sessions, keeping it light and yet heavily disciplined ("an equal balance of both," Bhaker would say with a laugh after her first medal).
What convinced Rana about Bhaker was that he was always sure she had the one key ingredient that makes for great champions: "passion". What he did was tap into it again.
Work hard, but also work smart: the feeling was that training ought to be hard, but not a chore. Rana urged Bhaker to discover more about herself, get involved in more hobbies (the violin is a new one, for instance), talk long walks. They didn't overanalyse numbers and data but went back to the basics. Set a process and follow it, became the mantra. Bhaker talks now about a childhood lost to shooting (she won her first national title at 15, and hasn't stopped since), but she says Rana helped her find balance.
"I only made Manu realise who she is, what she's capable of," he says. "I just reminded her that's she's not someone who can easily be forgotten that there's nothing she cannot achieve."
There is a clue to their relationship in the way he spoke to reporters about her first medal: "The way she carried herself in the final, it was outstanding. There was no flinching, no ifs and buts." Focused not on the result, but the process. Get the small things right, double and triple check the equipment, go through the process of aiming, tick things off your checklist. As the holy book they both love quoting -- the Bhagavad Gita -- says, 'Do your duty, do your best, the rest will follow.'
Where he had felt two (or one) events would have been ideal for Bhaker in Tokyo, he had no doubts about her shooting in three in Paris. She was ready this time. And both shooter and coach delivered big time.
When the medals came, Rana never claimed them for himself. "[The medals] carry a lot of significance. There were a lot of things that had to be answered, and today I gave those answers," he said. "But the medals are Manu's. And India's."