Every year in India, over a million students appear for NEET, the national entrance exam for the state-run medical education courses. Around 2.5% get admission for the chance to graduate as doctors from government colleges.
As small as that percentage is, the number is even smaller when it comes to Indian athletes targeting, and eventually qualifying for, the Olympic Games.
Sift Kaur Samra finds herself in both these small subsets.
At 22, she's cracked NEET, won gold in women's 50m rifle 3 positions at the 2023 Asian Games - beating China's world champion at home with a world-record total -and has now qualified for the Paris Olympics after topping the strenuous four-stage Olympic selection trials.
Even given India's recent run of talented young shooters, Sift's is an amazing story. Not only for her educational choices or international medals, but for the consistency, steady improvement, and mental toughness she has shown in what is shooting's long-form version.
Despite the scars from Tokyo - where an internationally-decorated, record contingent of 15 managed only 1 final, winning no medal for the second straight Games - Sift raises hopes that this year's talent will deliver an Olympic shooting medal for India again.
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Think of someone studying to be a doctor, and also making her name in the lonely, target-oriented sport that shooting is, and AI would probably draw up the image of a studious, serious athlete.
Sift is the opposite: an extroverted, fun-loving youth who quotes Diljit Dosanjh's method of relaxing, jokes about sleeping in and going to the gym, and has a uniquely balanced take on the pressure of her chosen sport.
"Mera bahut clear mindset hain [my mindset is very clear]... Shooting is a part of my life but it's not life to think about it 24/7," Sift says. It's a striking comment; the explanation even better: "Things work out only when you give them their personal space. I do that...for me, shooting's space is in the range," she says.
Clearly, Sift in the shooting kit on the range is very different from Sift lounging at home. This can prove to be her secret weapon as she begins to prepare for the most demanding period of her young career - an Olympic debut as an Indian shooter, with the added target of lofty expectations on her back.
It's also what sets her apart from her peers, believes her coach Deepali Deshpande.
"Sift is an intelligent shooter, she was doing MBBS so naturally her level of understanding is good, and she is a very straightforward person," says Deshpande, herself an ace shooter of her time, part of the 2000s shooting resurgence in India. "She has that ability to be in the present and focus on the issue at hand. She doesn't carry anything with her on the lane, when she is there, she will deal with whatever is there on the lane. Whatever happened outside, other problems she will deal with herself. She can cut herself off."
She does have one habit, though, that the coaches have tried to steer her away from: looking at her scores during competition. "I have to see where I am placed and what I need to shoot to go on top. Those calculations are always there in my head... it is said that you shouldn't do that during a match, but I am the kind of person who does what most people don't," she says.
Is this what helped her set the world record at the Hangzhou Asian Games? There, she took the lead over reigning World Champion Zhang Qiongyue after the first two positions and strengthening it in the standing part of the event, which is the hardest of the three.
No, she says, the number she looks at are limited to the range in its own space. "I had no idea about the world record, I came to know only when the media told me an hour later."
"If you don't know where you have to reach, then what's the point of doing it? That's why from Day One I have been the kind of shooter who has to know what the highest score is out there. My attention will be on the screen to see the difference."
Joydeep Karmakar, former India coach for 50m and the only Indian to reach an Olympic final in that event, believes one of her biggest advantages is her stoicism, calling it a rare quality in young shooters. "Sift is a balance of talent, perseverance and level head," Karmakar says. "She is not someone who will put up a very serious face - she may be giggling - but she knows what to do and knows her game. She has a great chance to go to the top because that kind of mindset is needed."
Indeed, her natural mindset is tailor-made for a sport like shooting. "We should be more in the present rather than the past or the future," Sift says.
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The Past
Sift's approach to shooting stems from her beginnings in the sport. She was in the eighth grade when she went to the shooting range during a summer vacation after she saw a family friend's son at the World University Games.
"I thought I also want to try this. After the vacation, I told my schoolteachers to put my name down for shooting without even discussing it at home." It wasn't easy - there was no range in or near her hometown of Faridkot, in Punjab - and she went for her first district competition without any training and a borrowed rifle. Before her state debut, though, her father sent her to Chandigarh "so that at least I would know what shooting is". She came fourth after only seven days of training and continued dabbling in both 10m air rifle and 50m rifle 3P.
She finally focused on 50m rifle 3P, an interesting choice because it is the most physically and mentally taxing discipline. One must shoot across three positions - prone (lying down), kneeling, and standing, at 50m which means factoring in things like wind speeds and weather. Unlike the 10m air discipline, this involves external elements, a change of positions and equipment and a large margin for momentum shifts.
World University Games, Chengdu, ���� Update☑️#Shooting��#TOPSchemeAthletes Sift Kaur Samra & Ashi Chouksey win��& �� respectively in Women's 50m Rifle Event. They scored 462.9 & 461.6 respectively.
Many congratulations to both �� pic.twitter.com/Il9VCzC0lc
- SAI Media (@Media_SAI) August 1, 2023
Sift's choice, and eventual mastery, of this harder discipline also reflects her unconventional mindset. When asked when she decided to focus on 3P, she laughs, "When medals started coming in."
"When I first started it, I didn't realise all these aspects. 3P is difficult because you have to check on the wind, the temperature. At the end, I chose it, no one forced me so I can't complain... When I broke the national record [in 2021], I shifted to 50m completely and I adapted to it very quickly."
Not only did she adapt to it, she's also grown to enjoy its unique challenges. "The best part is when you do the transactions [score difference when switching positions] - then you feel like you are shooting... this is a real rifle, the sound of the gun makes it feels real, I enjoy it."
Her international breakthrough was at the Junior World Cup in Suhl in 2022, by which time she'd already started on her academic journey. The COVID lockdown helped in this because all she could do during the time was study for NEET - "I didn't touch a rifle the whole time". When things started opening up, she was informed of trials for the Suhl event a month in advance and then all she did was train.
"It was my last junior event and that's when I realised, if I get a medal here, I can maybe think about the Olympics."
Indeed, top-level shooting and the Olympics were far from the Samras' thoughts when Sift started shooting. The family wanted her to be involved in a sport, but only till the national level. "We never had a goal as big as the Olympics, we had short-term goals... a national medal, doing the MBBS," says Pawandeep Samra, Sift's father.
He relates to Aamir Khan's character in Dangal and, like Mahabir Phogat (the father and uncle of the women wrestlers), has been her biggest support since the start, building her a shooting range at home to practise and helping her make the decision to leave MBBS when the college wouldn't offer flexibility even as her performance flourished.
"Two years back we were thinking of winning University medals and now we are in the Olympics trails. Kahaan se kahaan aa gaye! [ How far we've come]" Sift Kaur Samra
It would have been a tough decision, given how much Indians prize high-level education, especially medicine, but is being increasingly validated over time.
Her big moment was the Asian Games gold last October - when she finished ahead of Qiongyue by 7 points. Before that, she had a bronze at the World Cup in Bhopal and a quota-sealing final at the World Championships.
"In the last two years there has been a big difference in my life and in me... Things I couldn't event imagine are happening to me. God has given them and I very grateful," says Sift.
"There was a time where I thought 'Sirf ek national medal aa jaye [let me get just one national medal]', then it became breaking into the international team, then I won an international medal... I slowly got the experience and now I know how to play the competitions, I can feel the difference. In the trials (fellow shooter) Nischal and I were talking about how two years back we were thinking of winning University medals and now we are in the Olympics trails. Kahaan se kahaan aa gaye! [ How far we've come]"
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The Present
If India's shooting at the recent World Cups appears low-key, it's intentionally so: part of the federation's plan to learn from the disappointments of the last couple of Olympic Games and peak in time for Paris.
They organised the four-stage Olympic Selection Trial, spread across April and May in New Delhi and Bhopal, designed to simulate some of the pressures of an Olympic event. Sift won her three of the four women's 50m rifle 3 positions events, cementing her status as the country's best 3P shooter, while also testing her limits.
These trials were also the first time Deepali felt that Sift was under pressure, something she must deal with a lot more soon.
"She had been shooting well for some time and she wants to keep her place. So far, she was freely shooting for herself and not worried about anything else, but this time she felt it... The last match was the only one where she actually shot like Sift, all other scores were not up to her level of performance."
Her qualification scores of 583, 587, 589, 593 - topping only the fourth one - certainly attest to that. But her finals scores were enough to win 3 of the 4 trials.
These trials, that Karmakar has helped formulate, are meant to be hard - 'the toughest competition they have faced.' As Deepali puts it, the trials were all about shooting for survival, the Olympics, which is about shooting for a reward, might even be easier.
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The Future
And so, to Paris.
The ability to regroup that Sift showed in the trials, as much as her form, is going crucial for her at the Olympics.
Shooting calls for a lot of mental toughness - and the Indian context makes it even tougher. India's record in the sport in the 21st century began with Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore's silver at Athens 2004, the country's first individual gold from Abhinav Bindra at Beijing 2008 and two medals in London 2012. That success, and the investment in and planning around the sport - especially a solid junior programme - led to a clutch of regular international medals.
Expectations naturally heightened but the next two Games, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2021, drew blanks.
This pressure will only grow ahead of Paris, and there will be additional pressure for Sift because of her Asian Games gold and the world record.
Sift doesn't ignore this or try and blank it out -- it's hard when her name is prominent across social media and the comments on ISSF livestreams on YouTube mark her out as a player to watch out for -- instead, she looks to embrace the pressure.
"Shooting fans in India are telling me that I'm doing very well. This is the power which I get from others talking, and it has been very good for me."
"Pressure will be there: it's a human body and human mind, the one who can control that pressure will win. On that day luck also matters and I am hoping that it'll be good." Deepali is not too worried on that front either. "Sift is very sorted, she understands the difference in level and competition between Asian Games and Olympics. Her age, her age in shooting and the shortening of the 3P format [halved to 20 shots in each position] also helps."
The internal storm of pressure is one thing; there will also be external factors to consider in Paris. She may have the world record, but the level of competition will also be higher than anything she's faced before.
So far, only the United States and China have announced their shooters but that itself is formidable: she will be up against world champion Zhang, 10m air rifle world champion Han Jiayu, Sagen Maddalena and Mary Tucker, part of the gold medal winning 3P team at the 2023 World Championship.
Karmakar says the European shooters will be challenging too. "The Chinese are on top, and they will remain on top. But the Norwegian, Finnish shooters, a few Germans, and USA of course," he says. Indeed, five of the seven ISSF word gold medals in 2023 and all three so far in 2024 have been won by Europeans.
What's added a layer of intrigue (and helped Sift and other Indian shooters) is the emergence of the Indian sports equipment brand Capapie. Shooting is a highly technical and calibrated sport and requires high degrees of precision in the equipment that shooters use. One reason for India never winning an Olympic medal in the 50m disciplines (Karmakar finishing an agonising fourth at London 2012) was the difficulty faced by Indian shooters in procuring equipment needed.
"Equipment and ammunition are big factors in firearm shooting like 50m. Europeans have good access to while we Indians didn't, until Capapie emerged," Karmakar recalls.
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Pressure, the competition, opponents raising their game... The path to the podium in Paris will naturally be tougher than the path to Paris.
But as Deepali and Karmakar observe, Sift is 'stoic' and 'sorted'. This attitude reflects in conversations with her. Ask about what she sees as her biggest challenge, and the answer is surprisingly not the Olympics itself.
"The result we don't know but I will try to return [from the Olympics] with satisfaction." Sift Kaur Samra
"The biggest challenge will be to make myself more patient. So far, shooting has taught me a lot of patience and I want to make it better."
"I don't think I'll be looking at anything as a challenge. I will try to enjoy it, this is my first Olympics... it's not easy to reach here, there are so many experienced shooters and my name is in this list, so I want to enjoy it. The result we don't know but I will try to return with satisfaction."
No mention of a medal, but mental satisfaction is the goal instead. It's a take that fits in with Sift's interesting, contrasting personality. The shooter who does not meditate for mental training and likes to sleep as much as she can. The athlete who goes to the gym to please her very weight-focussed Punjabi family as much as to build strength. The student who reads up on the numbers needed before and during a match, but doesn't know she has a world record.
In the cauldron that will boil the pressure of performance, expectations, and Olympic debut together, a lighter approach to the occasion backed by steady strength of consistent numbers may be what helps Sift, and Indian shooting, shine on the biggest stage once again.