Sarabjot Singh had only one thing in mind. To keep the basics right. The 23-year-old from a village (Dheen) near Ambala, now a bronze medal winner in the Olympic Games, had a chat with his coach Abhishek Rana on Tuesday morning.
“I did not tell him much... ‘Just do the basics, and the rest will fall in place.’ He managed to keep it simple,” Rana told The Telegraph minutes after his ward and Manu Bhaker won the bronze in the 10m air pistol mixed event at the Chateauroux shooting centre on Tuesday.
“After the setback in the individual event, Sarabjot did not lose heart. He showed the nerve to make a comeback. And what a comeback!” Rana was over the moon. Next target? “An individual gold in the 2028 Olympic Games. That’s for sure,” Rana said. “I would give my all to change the colour of the medal in four years,” Sarabjot promised.
For someone who took up the game just as a hobby when he was 14, Sarabjot’s contribution to this medal is huge. Yes, Manu was in her element throughout, but in terms of pure shooting skills, Sarabjot was in a different zone altogether. And that is why India and Manu were able to get their second medal in the 2024 Olympic Games. Manu also became the first sportsperson of an independent India to win two medals in one Olympic Games.
How important it was for both the shooters to fire in unison can be gauged from the fact that South Korean Oh Ye Jin was brilliant throughout Tuesday’s duel. But her
partner Lee Wnho struggled to get into a rhythm. “We backed each other well,” Sarabjot said.
A winner in the Munich World Cup in June, Sarabjot showed promise ever since he burst onto the scene, beating the likes of Saurabh Chaudhary & Abhishek Verma to become national champion in 2021. That was just after the Tokyo Games. He won a medal in the ISSF World Cup in Bhopal last year, the only Indian to shine in that tournament.
“Hardworking and dedicated. I have been working with him since 2016, he has shown remarkable tenacity coming this far,” Rana, himself an international shooter during his playing days, said.
During his early years, Sarabjot, his father Jatinder Singh, a farmer, and mother Hardeep Kaur, a homemaker, used to have a 35-kilometre ride to Rana’s academy in Ambala. “That was tough for him,” Rana remembered.
“I got bored after two years of travelling by bus. From the third year, I used to ride with Chetan my friend. In 2021, I got a car to go to the range,” Sarabjot said.
Now does he have any plans to get a new car? “I cannot say now,” the shooter who once dreamt of being a footballer said.
Winner of multiple world events, Sarabjot said he was feeling down after not making it to the final round in the 10m pistol. “I was sad. I was thinking about what my father did for me, the support of my grandfather and all the lonely journeys I took on the bus to Ambala. This medal, hopefully, will give my parents a better life.”
They deserve so too. After all, their sacrifice — Jatinder had to borrow money to buy his son a pistol in November 2016 — has given the country an Olympic medal winner.
