Manu Bhaker became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal in shooting with a bronze at Paris 2024 in the women’s 10m air pistol event. It came a day after she became the first female shooter to reach an Olympic final in an individual event in 20 years. A pistol malfunction had denied Manu Bhaker a shot at a medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in the same event.
Days later, she became the first athlete from independent India to win two medals at the same edition of the Olympics after she claimed another bronze in the 10m air pistol mixed team event with Sarabjot Singh.
Even as a teenager, Manu Bhaker quickly rose through the ranks to become India’s latest shooting star.
Manu Bhaker was born on February 18, 2002, in Jhajjar, Haryana, a state known for its boxers and wrestlers. She, however, took to sports like tennis, skating and boxing in school and also participated in a form of martial arts called ‘thang ta’, winning medals at the national level.
She then impulsively decided to try her hand at shooting when she was just 14 – just after the Rio 2016 Olympics ended – and loved it. Within a week, Manu Bhaker asked her father to get her a sports shooting pistol to hone her craft.
Her ever-supportive father, Ram Kishan Bhaker, bought her a gun – a decision that would one day make Manu Bhaker an Olympic medallist.
At the 2017 national shooting championships, Manu Bhaker stunned Olympian and former world No. 1 Heena Sidhu. Manu shot a record score of 242.3 to erase Sidhu’s mark to win the 10m Air Pistol final.
She then added a silver medal at the 2017 Asian junior championships and the following year, Manu Bhaker announced her arrival on a big stage in style.
Making her ISSF World Cup debut at Guadalajara, Mexico, Manu Bhaker broke the junior world record in the qualification rounds to sail into the women’s 10m air pistol final.
Up against Olympic champion Anna Korakaki, three-time ISSF World Cup medallist Celine Goberville, and local favourite Alejandra Zavala in the final, Manu Bhaker shot a total of 237.5 to win the gold medal on debut.
At just 16 years old, it made her the youngest Indian to win a gold medal at an ISSF World Cup.
Manu Bhaker then paired up with Om Prakash Mitherval to win her second gold in the 10m air pistol mixed team event.
Bhaker was still eligible to participate in the ISSF Junior World Cup, and she promptly won gold medals in the individual and mixed team event in the 10m air pistol.
A month later, at the 2018 Commonwealth Games at Gold Coast, Australia, Manu Bhaker shot a new CWG record to clinch the women’s 10m air pistol gold.
She then won another gold in the 10m air pistol at her second ISSF Junior World Cup to add to a bronze at the mixed team event while narrowly missing out on a medal in the 25m pistol event.
Though she did not get a medal at the 2018 Asian Games, Manu Bhaker ended the year by creating history at the 2018 Youth Olympics Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She won the 10m air pistol gold, becoming the first Indian shooter and first female athlete from the country to win a gold medal at the Youth Olympics.
The teenager then teamed up with Saurabh Chaudhary at the 2019 ISSF World Cup in New Delhi and it proved to be a very fruitful partnership.
The duo won the mixed team gold medals at all three ISSF World Cups in 2019 and at the World Cup final in China, Manu Bhaker won both the individual and mixed team event gold.
Manu Bhaker also sealed an Olympics quota place for Tokyo 2020 with a fourth-place finish at the 2019 Munich ISSF World Cup.
She added a gold and silver medal in the 10m air pistol at the 2021 New Delhi ISSF World Cup and a bronze in the 25m air pistol, making her one of the medal favourites for India at the Tokyo Olympics.
However, Manu’s debut at the Games did not go as planned.
The teenager’s pistol developed a snag in the middle of the 10m air pistol qualification, forcing Manu to move away from the competition to fix the gun.
The damaged piece was replaced and Manu came back to the firing range. But the rhythm was already broken and it was a race against time to complete her remaining shots.
The youngster did well under pressure but it wasn’t enough to push her into the top eight for a place in the final.
In her next event – mixed 10m pistol – Manu Bhaker partnered with fellow teenager Saurabh Chaudhary. The two could only finish seventh even after topping stage 1 of qualification.
Manu Bhaker’s forgettable Tokyo Olympics campaign ended with the 25m pistol, in which she fell short of making the final.
Shortly after Tokyo 2020, Manu Bhaker became the junior shooting world champion in the women’s 10m air pistol at Lima and has won medals in the junior circuit fairly regularly since.
Manu Bhaker won the women’s 25m pistol silver at the 2022 Cairo ISSF World Championships and a gold in the same event at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou but her only individual senior triumph – a bronze in women’s 25m pistol – came at the Bhopal leg of the 2023 ISSF World Cup series.
The young shooter secured a Paris 2024 Olympic quota for India after finishing fifth in the women’s 25m pistol event at the Asian Shooting Championships 2023 in Changwon.
At the Paris 2024 Olympics, Manu Bhaker was selected to compete in the 10m air pistol, 10m air pistol mixed team and the women’s 25m pistol event. She was the only athlete from the 21-member Indian shooting team to participate in multiple individual events. She qualified for the final in all three events.
Manu Bhaker won the bronze in the women’s 10m air pistol event and then added another bronze in the 10m air pistol mixed team event with Sarabjot Singh.
In the women’s 10m air pistol event, the Republic of Korea’s Yeji Kim pipped Bhaker by 0.1 points to enter the gold medal round. Later, Bhaker missed out on adding a third medal in the women’s 25m pistol event by a whsker, after she missed two targets compared to Hungary’s Veronika Major’s single miss.
Source: Olympic.com
