You vs you: Why India's shooters stumbled at the 'final' hurdle

The shooting contingent had a lot of success but of the seven gold medals won, five came in team events while the individual finals yielded just two gold

First, the celebratory numbers: India finished the shooting campaign at the Hangzhou Asian Games with seven gold and 22 medals, returning with its richest haul ever from the meet. After the gloomy debacle of the Tokyo Olympics two years ago, this comes as a brighter morning for Indian shooting.

Manu shot a brilliant 590 to come out leading from the qualification round, yet finished fifth in the final after a few external factors (stoppages, "empties") disrupted her focus. (PTI)

Now, some context to the numbers: Of the 22 medals, 11 came in team events — not part of the Paris Olympics next year — one in mixed pair and 10 in the individual events. Of the seven gold medals by shooters, five came in team events while two in individual. That includes on the final day of shooting on Sunday, where Kynan Chenai, Zoravar Singh Sandhu and Prithviraj Tondaiman pocketed the men's trap team gold while Chenai took the individual bronze. From the silver-winning women's trap team of Rajeshwari Kumari, Manisha Keer and Preeti Rajak, neither were on the podium in the individual event.

Sift Kaur Samra and Palak Gulia ensured the individual champion count from this Asian Games remained the same as the previous 2018 edition (Saurabh Chaudhary and Rahi Sarnobat). Not lesser, not better.

While the quantity of medals and flurry of team gold and quality of some record-breaking scores points to the depth of talent on show at Hangzhou, the challenge will remain to translate that into top-notch shooting in individual battles and high-pressure finals come the Paris Olympics in less than a year, where team medals will not be around.

“The feedback I take from this medal haul is that it's a reflection that we're on the right track. But still, we have a lot of work to do. And we'll have to keep working,” Suma Shirur, the national rifle coach, said.

“There were some very young shooters, though quite experienced now, not just winning gold medals but also breaking world records," she added. “What's been interesting is that unlike previous years, we don't have one or two champions. Almost everyone won a medal.”

From the 33-member contingent at this Asian Games, 30 will return with medals; some, like Esha Singh and Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, with four each. The spread of events in the team gold medals — air rifle, pistol, rifle 3P, trap — too is evident.

“They are all really pushing each other," Shirur said. "It shows that our bench strength is strong, and this kind of healthy competition is very good for the overall growth of the sport.”

The volume of team gold and medals — which add up the scores of shooters from a particular nation in the qualifying round — reiterate that. The question, therefore, is why doesn’t the same add up in terms of gold and medals by the same shooters in the individual finals of the same event.

India had 19 individual finalists in shooting. Two among them won gold. Eight others had silver or bronze. Almost half of them fell short of the podium.

Take two examples of Swapnil Kusale and Manu Bhaker. Kusale topped the qualification in 50m rifle 3P with 591 points that helped the men’s 3P team to a gold with a world record score. In the final, on the cusp of gold, a barely-believable 7.6 brought him crashing down. Manu shot a brilliant 590 to come out leading from the qualification round, yet finished fifth in the final after a few external factors (stoppages, "empties") disrupted her focus.

Two shooters who stood out among a sea of competitors in the qualification stage succumbed the same day in the midst of the cream when it mattered. The final faults thus point to it being more mental than technical.

“The kind of support system that needs to come from within is way higher in individual finals, where it’s you versus you," said Priyanka Prabhakar, a leading sports psychologist who has worked with the national hockey and volleyball teams and athletes at SAI Bengaluru.

“It becomes more challenging also because you have so many people watching you. The expectations are quite high, especially in a sport like shooting which has traditionally done well in these events. To know where to focus our energies becomes a little bit more challenging in those situations.”

That’s where arousal regulation — the correlation between stress and performance — comes into play. “Some people would perform better when they have a bit of anxiety. Some people perform better probably at 30% anxiety. Everybody's competitive anxiety levels can be extremely different," said Priyanka.

So can personalities. Shirur has spoken about how Rudrankksh Patil, Divyansh Singh Panwar and Tomar, members of the world-record breaking 10m air rifle team, have different traits. While Patil is more meticulous in his approach, the other two tend to be more relaxed. Sift and Palak, the golden individual exceptions, have a common link — both were also academically-inclined and only recently turned their compete attention to shooting. The sport has not been their be all and end all, as it may have been for many others in that contingent.

“People have different personalities and different strengths," Priyanka said. “Not everybody can be calm in the big moments. Conversely, some people can bring their best performance out when they are slightly nervous.”

Studying these behavioral patterns and mental habits of individual shooters in high-pressure situations and big-stakes competitions continues to be a focus area for the country’s shooting coaches.

“And then we try and create such simulating environments in training so that the next time they are in a similar situation, they are stronger,” Shirur said.

Come the Paris Olympics next year, the Indian shooting contingent will hope that’s indeed the case.