Shooting, Olympics 2024: For Swapnil Kusale, patience finally pays in Paris

At the start of the 2021 sport shooting season, Swapnil Kusale was in a race for ranking points. The National Rifle Association of India had put down a formula to select the shooters that will compete at the Tokyo Olympics, and Kusale was trailing.

He decided to participate in the New Delhi World Cup in March that year. But since he was competing in the Minimum Qualification Standard section (which allows you to compete in the qualification event but without any chance of winning a medal), he was required to pay an entry fee. His coach Deepali Deshpande helped him with the payment, but Kusale eventually did not make the cut for the Indian team.

“There were some financial issues back then that disturbed his flow,” said Deshpande, the former chief rifle coach and Olympian from the 2004 Athens Games.

“He was always among the top shooters, but just never quite among the top two because of these reasons.”

Deshpande recalled Kusale’s disappointment at not making it for the Tokyo Olympics. But also how determined he was to dust himself off and focus on his sport.

On Thursday, at the Chateauroux range, Kusale’s focus was on point as he became the first-ever Indian to win an Olympic medal in the men’s 50m 3 positions rifle event. And with his bronze medal, India’s tally at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games had increased to three.

At a time when the average age of an Indian shooter breaking through the top ranks has steadily decreased, Kusale has had to wait to make his Olympics debut at the age of 28. It has been a long wait, but he has had to remain patient. Crucially, it is his patience that paid off in Paris.

As the temperatures rose in Paris amidst a heat wave, the 50m 3 positions rifle event, which is held outdoors, shooters would be open to the elements.

The heat, humidity and wind play a role in performances, but Kusale managed to contain himself in the qualification round by going outside his comfort zone.

“By nature, he likes to go in a rhythm, doesn’t like to change his routine,” explained Deshpande. “All his shots he likes to take at the same pace. But in the qualification round, he was shooting slowly. He took his time, waiting for the right moment to take his shots.”

In hotter conditions, shooters can sweat more than normal with the special jackets and trousers they have to wear for their sport. Because of that, the gun can get slippery due to the sweat, as can the equipment during the kneeling and prone phase of the contest.

Previously, regardless of the conditions, Kusale would tend to shoot quickly through the qualification stage. In the qualification round on Wednesday, he held his nerve and finished in seventh place to earn a spot in the final.

On Thursday, he had a decent start to the final, getting to total of 310.1 at the end of the first two series. It was not a score that would guarantee him a podium finish, but it kept him close enough to stay in contention. Once the elimination rounds began, he held his own and stayed in the hunt for the medal.

“I was focusing on my breathing and I kept repeating my keywords with every shot,” Kusale would later say to the official broadcaster.

That focus on the process helped him get the scores that would earn him a spot on the podium. But with every shot, he took his time. He took his shots only once he was ready, not being dictated by his previous fondness for shooting at speed.

Just like his journey to Paris, he was patient.

Born in the Kambalwadi village in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, his parents were school teachers who had taken loans to help with the costs of his sport.

Along the way, in 2015, Kusale took up a job as a ticket collector with the Indian railways, but harboured dreams of competing at the biggest stages of the sport.

He was among the top two shooters in his discipline when the selections were being made for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. But he was overlooked and his quota was handed over to another shooter in a different event.

“That was depressing for him because he was a young shooter then,” said Deshpande. “He had been sitting on the fence for long, but the opportunity just never came for him.”

Finally, at the 2022 World Championships in Cairo, Egypt, he stormed his way to a fourth place finish to earn the Olympic quota. He then won gold in the team event at the Asian Games in Hangzhou last year, along with another fourth-place finish in the individual event.

“Those near-misses fuelled him when we had the trials for the Paris team,” Deshpande added. “He had been working with a mental trainer, Vaibhav Agashe during this past year. And I got to see during the trials [in April and May] how patient he had become.”

From a shooter rushing into his shots for the sake of routine, Kusale had started to study the surroundings and then make the shot at the opportune moment.

He did it over two historic days in Paris, after a long wait to make his Olympic debut. The patience has finally paid off.