Paris Olympics 2024: Manu Bhaker wins bronze in women's 10m Air Pistol event

Manu Bhaker opened India’s medal account at the Paris Olympics 2024.

Manu Bhaker became the first Indian female shooter to clinch an Olympic medal by winning the bronze medal in the 10m air pistol event at the Paris Olympics 2024. This is also India’s first Olympic medal in shooting in 12 years.

The 22-year-old had a total score of 221.7, finishing behind South Koreans Oh Ye Jin and Kim Yeji.

Manu Bhaker is a Bronze 🥉medallist!! 🇮🇳 History for Manu Bhaker as she becomes the first Indian female shooter to bag a medal at the Olympics 🎉😍#Paris2024 #Shooting pic.twitter.com/B5k9JpnmLQ

— Khel Now (@KhelNow) July 28, 2024

Success at the highest level is not new to Manu Bhaker. She has won a whopping nine World Cup gold medals. She also won two medals, including a gold, at the 2018 Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games. Commonwealth Games gold, Junior World Cup golds, Junior World Championships golds: you name it, she has won it all.

As a result, there were high expectations from the shooter from Jhajjar, Haryana, as she made her way to the Tokyo Olympics 2020. What followed, though, was a nightmare for the then 19-year-old./kh

She took part in three competitions: the 10m air pistol individual, 25m air pistol individual, and 10m air pistol mixed team events. In the 10m air pistol individual qualifier, she was well placed to reach the final. However, her pistol developed a technical snag. Since she couldn’t get sighting shots with her new gun, she had to continue with her malfunctioning one.

She eventually narrowly missed out on qualification. From there, it completely went downhill for her. She couldn’t qualify for the final round of the 25m event either, while she and Sourabh Choudhary weren’t able to enter the medal rounds in the 10m mixed team event. She admittedly caved under pressure.

This was a crushing blow for an athlete as young as her. Having seen so much success since she began competing at the big stage, this failure at the showpiece event was a bitter pill to swallow.

Also Read: Paris Olympics 2024 Day 2 Live updates

She took her time to recover from this setback. However, she came back into the scene with a bang. She performed well at the 2022 Cairo and 2023 Baku World Championships, winning a silver and a gold respectively in the 25m team event. She was also part of the Hangzhou Asian Games gold medal-winning team in the 25m pistol event.

Having topped the Olympic trials in both the 10m and 25m events, she again came in with a lot of expectations on her shoulders.

In the qualifiers yesterday, she finished with 580 points out of a maximum of 600, ending third in the charts and becoming the first Indian female shooter to qualify for the finals at the Olympics since 2004. Impressively, she had a total of 27 Xs (inner 10s), the highest among all the shooters present.

She started off well with two series of 97 each, followed by a 98. In the fourth series, she had a hat trick of 9s, but her excellent start gave her a lot of breathing room. She managed to eventually score a very reasonable 96 in the series.

She scored her first 8 in her 43rd shot. While that might have created a few jitters, she ended the series with 4 10s, again scoring 96. There were fluctuations in the final series too, but Manu held her nerve. With another 96, she qualified for the final comfortably.

In the final, in front of a large number of Indian supporters, she had the perfect start, scoring 10.6 in her very first shot. Although she shot two scores below 10 in the first series of 5, a total of 50.4 ensured she was in second place.

Also Read: Ramita Jindal reaches final of Women’s 10m Air Rifle

She started off the next series, managing to score 10.1 and 10.3 in the first two shots. However, two consecutive shots of 9.6 resulted in her being pushed to the third spot, as she ended with 100.3 at the end of 10 shots.

While the next shot too was below 10, her next shot of 10.2 again sent the crowd into rapturous applause.

The next series again went well for her, as she scored 10.1 and 10.2.

The nineteenth and twentieth shots (again with scores above 10) confirmed a medal for Manu, as Thu Vinh Trinh of Vietnam finished 4th with 198.6 points.

With the three medalists confirmed, Manu Bhaker scored a 10.1 as Kim Yeji scored a 9.4, pushing the Indian into the silver medal position with a lead of 0.1. She again clicked under pressure, shooting a 10.3, but the Korean clutched under pressure with a massive 10.5.

While she narrowly missed out on a silver medal, she had tears in her eyes as she won India her first medal at the Paris Games.

Oh Ye Jin broke the Olympic record, scoring 243.2, while Kim Yeji, who was leading the pack for a long time, won silver with a total of 241.3 points.

Manu Bhaker now has the chance to become the first Indian athlete, since Independence, to win multiple medals at a single edition of the Olympics: the ace shooter will be competing in the 10m air pistol mixed team event (with Sarabjot Singh) as well as the 25m air pistol individual event.

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