How keeping a diary, breathing techniques and a conversation with father helped Sarabjot Singh fuelled him to Olympics medal

The sunset in Dhin, a village near Ambala, reminded Sarabjot Singh of a Parisian evening a fortnight ago. The 22-year-old was walking from the team bus to the hotel in Chateauroux hours after winning the bronze medal with Manu Bhaker in10m air pistol mixed team event. His mind was floating, as though in a trance. “It took me 2-3 hours to return to where I was prior to the Olympics,” he tells The Indian Express.

Later, he scribbled his thoughts in a diary. “I wrote nothing about the medal, but my technique, the planning, the execution and things that happened at the range. When I won the World Cup in Bhopal and Munich too, I only wrote about my technique and how I felt rather than my scores or gold medal.” he says.

Memories of another night rolled in. Two days before the medal, he had failed to qualify for the10m individual final. He sought refuge in the pages of his diary. “It was just a bad day. I never write about missed shots but I felt if I had made it to the final, it would have been a new game. I was not less than anybody. One thing that I have learnt is that if I think about the bad shots, they will affect my next shots. So I only think about that particular shot,” he says.

It took Sarabjot a few more hours to recover for the next day’s mixed team qualification. He returned to the diary to read the entries on the days he won World Cup titles in Bhopal and Munich. He also practised belly breathing to get the optimal amount of air in his lungs. “It helps me put my mind focused on breathing in between shots and not to think about the previous shot whether it’s a good shot or a bad shot. That day, when I spoke to my father, he told me about one of his friends who became the village sarpanch after trying for close to 15 years. Here I was getting my chance for a medal again in the next two days,” he says.

He picked himself up the next day, though the pair missed the gold medal match by one point. He was slightly disappointed, but the words of coach and two-time Olympic medallist Munkhbayar Dorjsuren rang in his head. “One bad shot can’t change your destiny. That should be the approach in qualifying to recover and it will help you guys in medal matches,” he recounts.

On the morning of the final, Gagan Narang, who had won the men’s 10m air rifle bronze 12 years ago in London on this exact date, told him: “Give your best, It’s a lucky date for us.” He felt a sense of destiny.

The final was a nervy affair. But Sarabjot kept his cool in critical moments. “It has always been about each one shooting to their best,” he says. All that he then recollects is standing on the podium, the cheering crowd, and the calm face of Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec, with whom he took a selfie. “I was watching a video of him where he was shooting without the fenders, cap or sight. Everybody has their own style and for somebody like him, shooting that way is fun. That’s what should matter. Not to miss the fun of shooting,” he says.

Roads of life

His memories rolled back and forth. Nostalgia seized him. Hours ago, he was driving his SUV from his village to Ambala to show his grandfather his medal. It’s the same road that he had taken numerous times, in crowded buses, to train under coach Abhishek Rana for years. At the village turn, a bunch of schoolkids waved at him from a school bus. He waved back and says: “Nothing gives me more joy than those bus journeys to Ambala. If I had not enjoyed those times, I would not have arrived here.”

He wants every shooter to hear his story. When he held a single shot air pistol for the first time in his life, he thought it was just a matter of pulling the trigger. Except it was not. “I thought there is the target, there is the pistol and that is shooting. But I ended up hitting the wall more often,” he says, chuckling.

He remembers his scorecard in the first district-level competitions. “73 out of 100”, he says proudly. The scores would improve once he began training under Rana from 2016. A score of 325 out of 400 fetched him his first big medal, a bronze. He self-deprecatingly says: “At that time, not many competitors were there in junior shooting. A below average score too fetched me a bronze.”

He vividly remembers his first gun– a Morini CM 162EI that cost his father, a farmer, Rs 1.7 lakh. “While I got my own pistol, spending on the ammunition was something that was not on my mind. One box would come for Rs 800-900 and I tried to shoot targets for a couple of days in a week for a full session. Rest of the days, I concentrated on dry practice, holding the pistol. There was a time when my scores went below 560 and people would say I could not achieve anything. But then I would think that whatever number of pellets I hit, I have to aim for perfection in that,” he narrates.

Then arrived the turning point, when he won the junior World Cup in 2019, before he was inducted into the Khelo India fold. He no longer needed to worry about pellets. Then his career blossomed, and in the last two years, he made it to finals in four World Cups, winning two.

Now, as the sun receded into the horizon, making a crimson aura around Sarabjot, he says he has discovered a new interest. Spinning cars at speed. Recently, he was spotted zipping at the BIC Circuit in Noida. He plans to buy a supercar too. “Cars and speed thrills me but only on the racing circuit. Whenever I am free, I watch videos of rallycross legend Ken Block,” he says. Life, since his medal, has taken him through new routes. But the old roads keep him warm and grounded.

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