All sportspersons carry some sort of reminder of their choice of profession. Wrestlers have cauliflower ears, judokas twisted knuckles, weightlifters grazed shins.
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Manu Bhaker has her own memento as well. There’s a pressure sore around thumb and forefinger and an angry red bunion at the base of her palm, around where she grips the wooden stock of her Pardini pistol. Her weapon’s hilt is custom shaped, designed as much as possible to follow the curve of her palm.
There’s only so much it can do. Each time she fires a .22 inch caliber brass bullet, 1.4kg of wood and iron kick back and bite into flesh. The 22-year-old is fully conscious of the blemish on her hand. “It’s not something I can get rid off. I’ve tried to treat it with creams but it’s never going to disappear as long as I shoot. It will always be there,” she admits.
The battle scars will last as long as she shoots. What will stay even after that are the two Olympic bronze medals, Manu will return to India with. She’s already journeyed far into legend at this point. And she very nearly went even further.
Competing in the final of the women’s 25m pistol event, she finished in fourth place, by the barest of margins, losing 4 shots to 3 to reigning world champion Veronica Major of Hungary.
For most of the competition Manu was right there fighting not just to stay in the competition but often sometimes for the lead. She was in third place after the fifth series of five shots and in second — just one behind the leader and eventual winner Jiin Yang of Korea after the sixth and seventh. A weak eighth series saw Major force a shootoff and a missed fourth shot ended up seeing the Indian eliminated by a single point.
The result was almost an anticlimax for the dozens of Indian journalists and fans who had made the 250km journey from Paris to this provincial French town in the wee hours of the morning. They had done so for no other reason but the certainty that a 22-year-old girl who had already made so much history was going to make more of it.
For the first time at Chateauroux, Bhaker returned from finals range at Chateauroux without a medal around her neck. When at the conclusion of her event, she returned to her chair placed next to the firing line for eliminated shooters, she almost seemed quizzical at exactly what just happened.
Published - August 03, 2024 01:34 pm IST
