India's bronze medallist at Paris Olympics in 50m rifle 3 positions event, shooter Swapnil Kusale on Thursday returned home to a grand welcome and expressed gratitude towards his family and coaches for their sacrifices to ensure his success.

Kolhapur's Kusale has so far been one of India's two individual medal winners — both in shooting — at the Games and his bronze was the third in addition to Manu Bhaker and Sarabjot Singh's tally in the sport.

Kusale received a warm reception on his return to the country and proceeded to the famous Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati temple in the city to seek the lord's blessing.

"This medal is not mine, it is for the whole country and Maharashtra's. It is for everyone who supported me, the government, the national federation. I am lucky that I could bring glory to Maharashtra," he told the media at the Balewadi Sports Complex during a felicitation event.

"I wanted to worship Bappa first and do the aarti. It's my second home and I get good sleep here," he said.

Kusale credited his coaches and family members for his success and said he would aim for the gold medal next time.

"The coaches and family members do a lot of hard work, also because they have made a lot of sacrifices as well as they are sending one of their family members somewhere (for competitions)," he said.

"The athlete keeps working on his training but all those who are behind him, they have to make a lot of sacrifices so I will give them a lot of credit," he added.

"The hard work through the years, getting a medal after going through the Covid pandemic, lacking supporters.. I eventually began shooting well and got the sponsors too,” he shared.

Kusale, who also became the first Indian to qualify for the final in the event, said he learned to handle pressure along the way.

"My family never told me what was happening at home but they gave me everything that I asked for. They never let me feel what they lacked. Now I am determined to ensure that they don’t feel lack of anything," he said.

"Talking about the pressure (in the final), I wanted to handle that and focus on shooting. I was imagining my team and Indian fans behind me and their noise was something I wanted to hear." "There were people from other countries too but I only wanted to focus the noise from the Indians and use that to bring a medal," he said.

"When my father admitted me to a sports school, a shooting game seemed interesting to me and seeing that, I thought I liked it and it started there," he recalled.

Kusale also shared his sentiments on wrestler Vinesh Phogat's disqualification from the 50kg women's gold medal match for being overweight by 100 grams just ahead of the final.

"After so much of hard work, (only) an athlete can imagine what she must be going through," he said.

"The Indian government had huge support. We had camps in other countries and they gave a lot of financial support," he said while talking about the support he got from the government.

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