Manu Bhaker feels Indian shooters can certainly do better than bronze

Life has come full circle for Manu Bhaker, the toast of the Indian contingent at the Paris Olympics, since the petite shooter made her last appearance in Kolkata at the Tata Steel Trailblazers Conclave organised by RevSportz.

The first Indian woman athlete to finish with two medals at a single Games — a bronze in the women’s 10m pistol event and then another one in the mixed team event — she was the cynosure of all eyes on the opening day of the third edition of the conclave on Thursday, 6 March.

There could have been a third medal as well at Paris, but an in-form Bhaker narrowly finished fourth in the 25m pistol final. “I know how difficult it is to finish fourth,” she said during an interaction.

However, the Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna awardee said, “Indian shooters are brilliant. We are right there at the top and we are naturally good at it. We are very sharp mentally, just to keep focus and keep going at it.”

Shooting accounted for three of the six medals the country won in Paris, with Swapnil Kusale picking up a bronze too — a huge leap from the blank the shooters drew in Tokyo and got mercilessly trolled for.

Looking back on her journey, the Jhajjar-born pistol shooter said: “I didn’t realise the importance of it all when I won a Commonwealth Games medal for the first time. I was only 16 years old and it was difficult for me to understand, but then I realised...

“We can get to greater heights. We have the talent in our country. There are able coaches and athletes... We just have to make sure that we are investing in the right things.

‘’Going ahead, we can do better than the bronze,” Bhaker said. “We can hear the national anthem on the biggest stage.”

It does need India's sporting arena to make a lot of changes for that sort of success—but it is doable, she feels.

“It’s a matter of changing how we think about certain things. Talent is not a problem. We need the belief and we have it now,’’ she said.