India’s ace Olympian Manu Bhaker arrived at the Kaun Banega Crorepati stage after her twin-medal heroics in the Paris Olympics 2024. Manu returned home from Paris with two bronze medals to her name and has since been in the media and social media spotlight. On Thursday, Manu was spotted at the sets of KBC, with fellow Olympian Aman Sehrawat, who also bagged a bronze medal in the Paris Olympics. On the hot seat, Manu had some intriguing conversations with Amitabh Bachchan, including the technique she uses while shooting at the big stage.

During the chatter on the show, Amitabh Bachchan said that he would always wonder why shooters take such big gaps between shots before being explained the logic by his son Abhishek.

“I used to wonder why shooters waited so long after taking a shot. I couldn’t grasp it until Abhishek Bachchan explained that they’re controlling their breathing and heart rate; that’s why they take their time.”

Aaj aa rahi hain Desh ki shaan Manu Bhaker KBC par sabka dil jeetne! Let’s cheer for olympic medalist #ManuBhaker

Dekhiye #KaunBanegaCrorepati #OlympiansSpecial, aaj raat 9 baje sirf #SonyEntertainmentTelevision par.@SrBachchan #ManuBhakerOnKBC #KBConSonyTV #KBC16 #KBC2024 pic.twitter.com/LFguMhzEin

— sonytv (@SonyTV) September 5, 2024

Manu also shed light on the topic, explaining why breathing techniques to calm down the heart is so important between shots.

“At the start, having a strong foundation is crucial, and that applies to everything. Many people think shooting is simple — just pick up the pistol and aim, but it’s much more complex than that. During a match, our heart rate accelerates, and we must remain composed, even if we’re feeling anxious.

“Controlling that anxiousness or nervousness takes time and practice. To maintain focus, I rely heavily on yoga, Surya Namaskar, and meditation. I follow this routine with strict discipline. Additionally, I use a breathing technique with a 4:8 ratio: inhaling for four seconds and exhaling for eight seconds. Mastering this through practice helps normalise my heart rate. During matches, when nerves make our hands shake while aiming, this breathing exercise helps me stay calm and focused,” she revealed.

Manu Bhaker also requested Mary Kom to plan a workout session with her.© Instagram

Sarabjot Singh, who partnered with Manu Bhaker to win India’s first ever Olympic medal in a mixed shooting event, on Saturday said they “barely” got to train together in the run-up to their event. Bhaker and Sarabjot scripted history with a bronze medal in the 10m air pistol mixed team shooting event at the Paris Games. “My training was due at 9, hers was due at 12, individually. Mixed session lasted for 30 minutes, before which she trained separately, and I separately.” “Our conversation was usually brief and limited to ‘Apna 100 per cent dena hai (we have to give our 100 per cent)’. Apart from that, we enjoyed some banter. Sometimes I would make fun of her, sometimes she would of me,” recalled Sarabjot.

Sarabjot also revealed his longtime fandom for Yusuf Dikec and said he has been looking up to the Turkish shooting icon for inspiration since 2011.

“I have been watching his (Yusuf’s) videos since 2011. He has always been like this. He is 51 today. Even though I have tried, I could not match his perfection. If I had the chance, I would ask him what he eats?,” said the 22-year-old from Dheen village of Haryana during an interview with PUMA India.

Sarabjot said that his pistol is engraved with SSINGH30, comprising his initials and a significant date in his journey.

“I didn’t give it a name. When I achieved my personal best at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, I got the weapon engraved with ‘SSINGH30’. That is my best weapon. Because my medal (gold) came on September 30 and that was a significant achievement,” he said.

The athlete also shared that he has had to deal with his fair share of setbacks in his journey. Meditation, and a rare yogic technique called Trataka, helped him.

“The main technique is to look at the candle flame with eyes open for three minutes, and then imagine for two minutes. I used to keep it directly in front of my eyes.

“Complete darkness in the room, complete peace, silence. My eyes would water; it was not easy. The most important thing is visualisation in shooting,” said Sarabjot.

In conclusion, the Olympic medallist stated his ambition for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

“LA ’28; iska colour change karna hai (LA ’28, I want to change its colour),” said Sarabjot, gesturing toward his glittering bronze medal. 

Vinesh Phogat had reached final of women’s 50kg freestyle wrestling© AFP

She calls him a father figure, and he perceives himself as her protector. Sometimes, he even needs to protect her from herself. Manu Bhaker and Jaspal Rana are chalk and cheese when it comes to their individual personalities but together at the shooting range, they can plot Olympic medals with mere eye contact. The strict disciplinarian coach and his effervescent protege were at PTI headquarters to interact with its editors and talk about a journey which had its fair share of rough and tumble but eventually yielded India two bronze medals at the recent Paris Olympics, making Bhaker the first athlete in post-independence India to achieve such a feat.

“I would say he’s like a father to me and it’s a matter of trust that you put in a person,” said the 22-year-old Bhaker flashing a radiant smile and content look.

“He gives me a lot of courage whenever I feel, whether I can do it or not,” she went on even as Rana kept his head down.

“He will probably slap me and he’ll be like ‘you can do it, you trained for it’.” It was at this point that Rana joined the conversation, a tad surprised by what Bhaker had just uttered.

“You have a controversy right here,” he interjected.

Bhaker was quick to clarify though, “I mean it’s not like a slap (literally) but like, I’m just using a slang. It’s like he’ll push my limits. He’ll be like ‘you’ve been training for this and obviously you will be able to deliver.” The two shared a laugh soon after, aware that their stormy parting of ways before the Tokyo Olympics is still one of the most talked about controversies of Indian shooting.

Tokyo was a disaster in every sense of the word for Bhaker, her weapon malfunctioned before the 10m air pistol qualifications and she never really got going after that setback in any of her events.

Rana could only watch in frustration on TV in far away India.

They got back together little over a year back, determined to erase that painful episode and available evidence suggests that the mission has been accomplished.

“When we started 14 months back, there was only one request from my side to her: that we will not discuss the past. We’ll start from here and we’ll move forward. So we kept that thing throughout,” Rana said, keeping the details of their patch-up close to his chest.

“My work is to protect her. It is not only coaching. At this level, we cannot teach them how to see or how to pull the trigger. We just need to give that protection even from their own self,” he explained.

“Sometimes it (performances, attention) goes to your head and you’re all over the place. So, to keep them grounded and keep them protected, that’s our job, the coach’s job,” he asserted as Bhaker nodded in agreement.

None to blame for Tokyo debacle

Bhaker’s clarity of thought belies her age. The youngster from Haryana’s Jhajjar had no qualms admitting once again that the Tokyo heartbreak nearly drove her away from shooting, and that she hung in there by the thinnest of threads.

“I would like to say about Tokyo that there was nobody to blame…it’s in the past already. Tokyo taught me a lot of things to be prepared in a better manner, more aware of everything, my equipment, my mental health, physical health,” she said.

“I would say, it really made me sad at times. I was on the verge of giving up shooting at times, but then I was, Ok, ‘what else would you do’,” she remembered.

Enter Rana once again to clear the cobwebs of her mind, in a way protecting her from herself.

“When we (Jaspal and I) started to work together again, that was the time when I was like ‘you know what, shooting is going to be it for me’,” she said.

“We were like ‘let’s go all in it’. The journey was not easy but I think everything happens for a reason and as he (Jaspal) says ‘you get what you deserve, not what you want’.” She nearly managed to have it all in Paris but for a fourth-place finish in 25m pistol event.

Education is important. Next course in Nalanda?

Her shooting aside, Bhaker is also quite proud of her academic achievements. She scored upwards of 90 per cent in most of her subjects in 12th standard and also qualified for Tokyo Olympics around the same time.

For this balance too, she gives some credit to Rana, who, along with her brother, persuaded her to pick the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi University for her graduation, outrightly rejecting her plan of going for an online course.

“…He (Rana) and my brother, both were so persistent that ‘you must have your degree from his college even if you do not get the kind of time that you require to study and pass the exams (with high marks). We will try to help you with the assignments’,” Bhaker said.

And having managed to log good scores both with her pistol and her books, Bhaker said she would advise every budding athlete to do the same.

“It should go hand in hand because, personally, for me I think it has played a major role.” The importance of education was one thing on which Rana and Bhaker were on the same page wholeheartedly.

Rana even went to the extent of saying that he refuses to train youngsters who drop out of school to pursue only shooting.

“…you won’t last forever, so whenever you give up (sports), then you have to have something (to fall back upon). I make sure they (my wards) are studying . I don’t take any kids who have left school or those who don’t want to study further. I don’t even train with them,” he said.

Bhaker chimed in to reveal that Rana has been pushing her to do a course of her choice from the recently-inaugurated Nalanda University, a great centre of learning in the fifth century before being destroyed by invaders 700 years later.

Asked what would be her subject of choice, the former political science student said,”…I am open to anything. You give me a subject, in probably 2-3 months I’ll get used to it. I will make my peace with it.” But it would certainly not be maths. She admitted to being bad at it and Rana took the opportunity to tease her for it.

“She doesn’t even remember the points she is winning or losing (in a match), so that’s the best thing,” he quipped, evoking a laugh from her too, doing his other job of keeping her grounded to perfection.

Double Olympic-medallist shooter Manu Bhaker’s coach Jaspal Rana has slammed the national federation’s “ever-changing” Olympic selection policy, saying that it has hurt some of the most promising talents in the past and will damage more youngsters if there is no consistency going forward. Rana, a pistol legend in his own right who won three Asiad gold medals in the 2006 edition, hardly minced words as he questioned the federation’s tendency to make last-minute changes to its policy, and its stubborn refusal to acknowledge or facilitate the presence of shooters’ personal coaches at national camps and trials. He made these observations during a visit to PTI headquarters with Bhaker, who won bronze medals in 10m air pistol and 10m air pistol mixed team (alongside Sarabjot Singh), for an interaction with its editors on Friday.

“The (federation’s) selection policy changes every six months. I met the sports minister and told him ‘get the selection policy from the federation. Let them decide… whatever they decide, right or wrong, we are not discussing that, and then stick to it’.

“You will see the difference (in the performance of shooters),” said the decorated marksman.

Several talented shooters like Saurabh Chaudhary, the only one to make the 10m air pistol final at the Tokyo Games, and Asian Games gold-medallist pistol shooter Jitu Rai faded away in a matter of few of years at a time when they were among the brightest prospects for Olympic glory. Rana said the system failed them and many more.

“Where is (pistol shooter) Saurabh Chaudhary, where is (Asian Games gold medallist pistol shooter) Jitu Rai? Does anybody talk about them? No. Are we talking about (10m air rifle shooter) Arjun Babuta, who finished fourth in Paris? He missed the medal by a fraction,” the firebrand 48-year-old asked.

“Nobody is thinking how to get him back on the platform (again),” said Rana, who was allegedly told to leave the Karni Singh ranges by the federation’s High Performance Director Pierre Beauchamp during the Paris Olympics Selection Trials.

The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) amended its selection criteria in 2021 after a second successive medal-less Olympic outing in Tokyo, drastically reducing the bonus points awarded to quota winners and re-introducing trials to decide the final squad after a considerable gap.

Earlier, the composition of the final squads was at NRAI’s discretion and quotas used to be swapped if the federation did not consider a shooter good enough.

Names were finalised based on NRAI’s own obscure assessment of the shooters’ performance leading up to the Games, causing anxiety among even the best of performers.

But even with the introduction trials, there was no consistency and NRAI faced criticism for restricting the number of shooters who could aim for an Olympic berth to just top five based on international and camp performances.

This made it impossible to even have a full field of eight shooters at the trials, which was widely ridiculed and criticised.

Rana said he wasn’t against change but would like more consistency during an Olympic cycle.

He said, currently, there is no mechanism to protect Olympic and world medallists and lamented that Bhaker, despite winning two medals in Paris, will have to fight for a place in the national squad once she returns from a three-month break.

“All the Olympic medallists, we don’t see them after one or two Olympics because there is no system by which we can protect them,” he observed “The squad is selected from the Nationals. So, if she is not playing the Nationals, which she is not, then next year she will not get the facilities other shooters will get. Those who have competed in the Olympics and proved themselves, let them be there to compete in every trial,” the coach asserted.

“She walked with me”

Rana had to coach Bhaker from the spectators’ gallery at the Paris Games as he did not have the requisite accreditation for access to field of play. He was also lodged away from the Games village but the Dronacharya awardee said none of it had any impact on his zeal to see Bhaker succeed.

“They (federation’s restrictions) made us stronger by putting all the restrictions. We were ready for it and it didn’t affect us at all, not even one per cent. (The coordination) between me and Manu (is such that) we don’t need to talk and I think every coach has to learn that.” “It used to be a long walk (to my hotel) from the range but she used to walk with me,” Rana said, to which Bhaker quipped, “It only made you fitter.” The personal-versus-national-coach debate caused a lot of rancour in the lead-up to Paris.

Rana, when asked what was the solution going forward, said: “There cannot be two cooks (coaches). I think one person has to take the lead.” “There has to be a little understanding and thankfully, there was little understanding this time.” Bhaker, on her part, thanked Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president PT Usha for ensuring that Rana makes the trip to Paris to assist her.

“We requested PT Usha ma’am and she assured us that ‘you do your job and you just don’t bother about it’. I did not have to ask her again,” disclosed Bhaker.

Her shooting hand bruised by repeated pistol recoils during unrelenting training, Manu Bhaker will take a well deserved three month break. But it will be no vacation. The double Olympic medallist will continue her other routines including yoga and waking up at 6 am — which she hates. And oh yes. She also plans to catch up on her hobbies — horse riding, skating, Bharatnatyam and violin practice to name a few. The 22-year-old, who won bronze medals in the 10m air pistol and 10m air pistol mixed team (partnering Sarabjot Singh), was at PTI headquarters on Friday along with her coach and shooting great Jaspal Rana for a freewheeling interaction with its editors.

Proudly flaunting her medals, the vivacious youngster from Haryana’s Jhajjar spoke about her Paris preparations, how the Tokyo setback was nothing more than a distant memory now, and also her plans to indulge in everything that she put on hold for her Olympic dreams.

“Now, I have some time off and I can probably do that (martial arts) again,” said Bhaker, a karate kid in her teens before a change of heart led her to shooting.

“I was not able to get that kind of time to invest myself into that (martial arts). Finally, I can take time off for my hobbies, and I have many, many hobbies. Horse riding… personally, I love horse riding, skating, I can still manage on the roads, then fitness, I really enjoy working out.

“Then, I have dance (as a hobby) also , I am learning Bharatnatyam. I love the dance forms. I was training in France, I wasn’t able to get time, not able to cope up with the (Bharatnatyam) classes,” said Bhaker, whose trainer is from Tamil Nadu.

“She takes my classes personally and then I have violin also,” she added.

As she revealed her bucket list for the “holiday”, Rana had a faint smile on his face and he also made it a point to shake his head in disapproval at the very mention of horse riding.

“…then she has to come back in one piece,” Rana said, drawing a laugh from Bhaker.

“Skating and horse riding are something she should not be doing and she’ll be responsible for whatever happens. Who rides a horse thinking that they will fall?” he wondered aloud.

A bemused Bhaker was not going to back down easily, their banter also being a reflection of the easy equation between one of the most talked about coach-player combinations in Indian sports right now.

“I have been learning horse riding for sometime now,” she retorted immediately, asserting that she would be responsible if anything goes haywire.

“I was waiting that after the Olympic, I will do horse riding. And so many other things I want to do like skydiving, scuba diving. I’ve waited for so long,” she said, inviting another shake of the head from Rana.

On his part, Rana was clear that the break was to ensure that the youngster’s shooting hand gets back to full fitness.

“This (pointing to her injured hand) is the reason we are making her rest for three months. Because this (injury) has been for the last eight months and it has not healed till now,” Rana said.

“So rest is mandatory for the hand, and we had decided much before the World Cup (Final was awarded to New Delhi)… Our decision to stop for three months was before that,” he added.

“It will not be very easy but this break is required. It’s not something we’ll enjoy. It’s only the shooting part which will not be there but her mental (training) waking up in the morning for yoga, everything will be as per what we were doing. Because that’s the lifestyle she has to follow.” Bhaker will not compete in the the season-ending prestigious ISSF World Cup Final for elite shooters from across the world in October in Delhi, and also likely skip the national championships and the camps that will follow to tend to her injured hand.

Bhaker had done a rendition of the national anthem on a violin, gifted to her by her brother, and a video of it went viral after her Paris performance.

“Yes, I was able to manage something on the violin, but I’m only on the basics,” said the champion shooter.

“Indian classical is my preference, but I’m only like beginning to learn it, so I’m not at the advanced level. I’m just one month into it… just the basics.” 

Screengrab of PM Narendra Modi with shooter Manu Bhaker.© YouTube/@Narendra Modi

Manu Bhaker is the first Indian woman to win a medal in shooting at Olympics.© AFP

Manu Bhaker made history at the Paris Olympics 2024 by becoming the first Indian since independence to win two medals in one edition of the game. In all India finished with six medals, with Manu winning two. She won a bronze in women’s individual 10m air pistol and also in the 10m air pistol mixed team event with Sarabjot Singh. She was also chosen as India’s flag-bearer at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony.

Ahead of the closing, Manu and his mother met star javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra, who won a silver. Those two videos went viral and rumours started doing the rounds about their personal lives. Manu has now broken silence on the video.   

Neeraj Chopra can be seen talking to the Manu Bhaker’s mother and into the other video, Neeraj Chopra and Manu Bhaker are discussing closely..!

I’m sorry but I don’t know why I am getting interested in Manu Bhaker and Neeraj Chopra pic.twitter.com/uymONMo8sj

— Priyanshu Kumar (@priyanshu__63) August 11, 2024

“There is a video which is going viral, where your mom can be seen talking to Neeraj Chopra. Too many rumours are circulating. What is your take on this?” the anchor asked Manu Bhaker. 

“I don’t know much about it. I was not there when this happened. But since 2018 we have been meeting on the sidelines of events. We don’t have that much interaction otherwise. During events we talk a little. But there is no truth to the rumours that is going around,” said on News18.

The manner in which the three were interacting with each other sent social media in to a wild speculation mode, with many suggesting that marriage could be on the cards for Neeraj and Manu. However, the pistol shooter’s father has put the speculations to bed, saying his daughter isn’t even old enough for such a moment in her life.

“Manu is still very young. She is not even of marriageable age. Not even thinking about it right now,” Manu’s father Ram Kishan told Dainik Bhaskar, dismissing any rumours or speculation regarding her future plans.

In the videos that surfaced on social media, Manu’s mother also seemed to have a great connection with Neeraj. Ram Kishan revealed that Manu’s mother considers Neeraj as her son, hence the bond between the two.

“Manu’s mother considers Neeraj like her son,” he said, highlighting the bond and affection that exists between them, while also dismissing any romantic angle between the athletics star and Manu.

Neeraj’s uncle also spoke on the talks around the Paris silver medallist’s marriage. He said, “Just as Neeraj brought the medal, the entire country got to know about it. Similarly, when he marries, then everyone will know.”