‘I was heartbroken after Tokyo’: Coach Jaspal Rana details how life-work balance helped Manu Bhaker win two Olympic medals

Jaspal Rana must have the urge to scream ‘told you so’ but here he is, sitting all by himself in a modest room, eating crisps. So secluded are the streets of Chateauroux and the surroundings are so eerily silent in this army town 300 km from Paris that the crunch with every bite could constitute noise pollution.

The coach of double Olympic medallist Manu Bhaker, Rana lives away from the rest of India’s shooting team and coaches who are a 30-minute drive away at a mini Athletes’ Village in the co-host city.

“I wouldn’t even have been here had (Indian Olympic Association president) PT Usha ma’am not intervened. My name wasn’t on the list initially,” he claims, without going into further details.

One wonders if Manu’s two bronze medals would have been possible without Rana being there. His presence, Manu says he’s had a calming influence on her during tense moments. ”He has played a huge role in the medal. It’s the blood and sweat of both of us,” Manu said on Sunday after winning her first bronze medal.

Even with him being there, it’s not been straightforward. Since he isn’t the official team coach, Rana can’t sit behind the athlete in the field of play. He is in the stands with the rest of the public, taking a seat diagonally opposite Manu so they can exchange looks between shots. A lot is said without a word being spoken.

Rana doesn’t speak a lot and nor is he spoken to much. A champion shooter, a part-time politician and now a full-time coach of independent India’s only athlete to win two medals at the same Olympics, the 48-year-old was almost ostracised within India’s shooting community.

Ask him why and Rana, a straight-talker, is dismissive: “Do you really think these people are the shooting community? You write down the names and see what their achievement is. None of them form the ‘community’.”

The former world and Asian champion adds: “For 10 years, I worked on my terms. Gave results. Didn’t let anyone dictate terms. Out of those 10 years, if for 3 years they had their way, it doesn’t bother me. Maybe that was also needed. When you spend too much time in one place, it affects your productivity. Neither would Manu have thought about this (getting back); neither would I get a chance to rectify the things that were said about me.”

A lot was said. The former National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) president, Raninder Singh, called Rana a ‘negative factor’ and pinned the blame solely on him for India’s medalless outing at the Tokyo Olympics. Earlier this year, the current high-performance director, Pierre Beauchamp, allegedly asked him to leave a training camp, citing a ‘standard operating procedure’. Others call him an agent provocateur.

“I was really sad and heartbroken (after Tokyo). That wasn’t needed. Especially for someone I always admired, who supported me for a good 10 years, gave me a free hand, gave me all the power… I don’t know what happened in that one year.”

The ‘10 years’ Rana repeatedly refers to are seen as the decade of growth for Indian shooting where an army of teenagers came through the ranks and took the shooting world by the scruff of its neck. The long list also includes Manu, who started under him in 2016 as a 14-year-old.

India’s Sarabjot Singh and teammate Manu Bhaker compete in the 10m air pistol mixed team event at the Paris Olympics in Chateauroux, France. (AP Photo)

Rana was India’s junior team coach back then. “I fought an election to become MP in 2009 from Tehri (in Uttarakhand) for the BJP. It was my main time in politics. But I went to the junior team,” he says. “Kitney MP hai India mein! This was a bigger and better responsibility that I took.”

When the Tokyo debacle happened, Jaspal was among the coaches who fell out of favour and following a public spat with Manu, he suddenly lost his footing within the shooting circuit.

“I had nowhere to go but I had a lot of things to do. I used to do farming, I started making a mountain home, one range in Mussoorie up in the hills. My father has a resort so I was working there,” he says. “I started looking after things I neglected during those 10 years when I was constantly travelling.”

Rana claims to have received an offer from China’s national team seven months ago. He declined it, without elaborating why but around the same time, he reunited with Manu, with both agreeing to not talk about the past.

Manu, he says, was also a gifted shooter and was ‘disciplined’. Instead of nagging her about technique and overloading her with information, Rana says he had ensured there was a work-life balance.

India’s Manu Bhaker celebrates with the Indian flag after winning the bronze medal in the 10m air pistol women’s final round at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Chateauroux, France. (AP Photo)

“If a kid wakes up at 5 am, reaches range at 8-9, shoots for 2 hours, then goes for lunch followed by another 3 hours of shooting, then physical training, then time with physio… After that if you tell them, ‘Go enjoy your life’, do you think they’ll be able to do it?

“If you load them up so much, what will they do? If the child is a genius but can’t make Maggi, toh life ka achaar daalega kya? You have to live life, learn things, gather knowledge. Shooting is life for these people, but you can’t let other things go.”

Manu, who worked with at least four different coaches during the 18 months or so when she parted with Rana, had said in May that one of the biggest changes she made post-Tokyo was to detach herself from shooting once she was away from the ranges.

“Earlier, I was much more in my bubble. Just shoot, stay in my room and rest because I got so tired. You can always live life, come on! And you can always make mistakes,” she had said.

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Even in Chateauroux, the two don’t spend the whole day talking about shooting. “From the range, we walk because that gives us time to talk — there are a lot of people everywhere else. So we walk and talk. Then I drop her to the village and after that, there isn’t a phone call unless there’s something urgent. She is her boss. And I am in my apartment here.”

Three years ago, Rana was booted out of the system even though he maintained he had it in him to produce an Olympic medallist. In Manu, he now has delivered a double medal winner. But he won’t say ‘told you so’.

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