One of the most enduring sights of the Asian Games shooting competition was teen sensation Manu Bhaker sitting distraught in her chair after being knocked out of the 25m sports pistol final, having made it to the medal round with a record score in qualifying. That failure clearly weighed on her in the 10m air pistol final as well and her body language was clearly out of sync with the shooter people were used to watching in the past.
Mind you, the 16-year-old hardly put a foot wrong and qualified for both the finals, which in itself is a commendable achievement. But the pressure of expectations after a surreal start to her international career and small mistakes meant that she ended up without a medal.
The absence of a medal probably looks more glaring given the fact that other teenagers like Saurabh Chaudhary and Shardul Vihan went on to win medals in their first major multi-discipline event and knives were already out from some quarters given the high stakes. But while Bhaker did not win a medal, 2018 Commonwealth Games gold medallist Anish Bhanwala and the talented Elavenil Valarivan did not even make the final in Palembang.
While there is nothing to panic about the reversals it is important to ensure that these talented shooters don’t get affected by such results and the media scrutiny and self-disappointment that follows after every failure. And this is where all the success or failure of National Rifle Association of India’s junior program is likely to be defined in the long run because this not the first time that teenagers have been challenging the seniors or winning medals on the international stage.
True, that unlike in the past, the number of teenagers winning medals at the big stage has gone up exponentially. But speak to any senior shooters and they will tell you that the problems of ensuring these youngsters convert the early potential into consistent performances for the next decade or so remain the same.
India’s only individual Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra highlighted the issue in one of his tweets, just when the teenagers were being hailed for their performance in the Asian Games.
Every successful sportsperson would tell you that there are more failures than success stories in their entire career. But with teenage prodigies failures are sometimes difficult to digest as they come after considerable success and hence need a different mindset to recover from.
And there have been quite a few cases in the past. Be it a Mampi Das, who equalled the world record score in air rifle even before she turned 16 or a Malaika Goel, who won a silver in the 2014 Commonwealth Games, or world junior champion Yashaswini Deswal.
Apart from being extremely talented, all these shooters were driven for success and were willing to push themselves to the hilt. While that approach got them immediate success, it were these early results which hurt them as their own expectations from themselves began to weigh them down.
Also as they grow physically, they have to make a lot of technical adjustments and that becomes difficult to digest as performance starts to fall and they end up resisting change. The prime example of this was former world junior champion Navnath Fartade. The boy from a modest background surprised even himself when he won the title in Zagreb in 2006. He then got a job and shifted base to Pune to train harder and fulfill his Olympic dream, but fell by the wayside as he was unable to adjust to the changing environment and technical changes he had to make to get to that level.
Fartade ultimately gave up but many other youngsters who were hailed as the next big thing in Indian shooting are still working hard for hours everyday looking for that one spark which will bring them back into contention. And many of them make the mistake of pushing themselves more and more, forgetting the fact that they picked up the sport and started to win because they enjoyed the process of learning without the focus on the end result.
Joydeep Karmakar, who has been mentoring another prodigious talent Mehuli Ghosh, was spot on when he spoke about the need for balance while working with these their teenagers.
It is difficult to ascertain the context in which Karmakar made the above comment, but it is a known fact that discipline has been the buzzword in NRAI’s junior program. And while it has helped the youngsters maintain focus and work hard, the real challenge would be to understand how much is too much.
This probably is the age where the individuals would also want to explore life, understand their own personalities and the process of helping them grow would have to go hand in hand as they chase their dreams in the shooting range.
Junior national pistol coach Jaspal Rana himself had gone through this turmoil, having won the junior world championship gold when he was 18, but he went on to win many more medals for India at the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games after few reversals.
Speaking about the teenagers, Rana told the media in Palembang, “They are growing very fast. They don’t even know what a teenager is or does. They have no friends around them. Every month they are travelling. Don’t see family for a couple of months. We are taking away a lot of things from them to get something. If not this then [they can] sit at home with the family and do nothing… life is not worth it.”
“They can walk away if they want. In the current system I’ll get another shooter to replace any of the youngster in every category. We are not dependent on one person. We have a back-up plan as well. If you’re not practising properly, if you are not doing yoga, you are not going to be here long. That day, I’ll feel bad, I’ll be unhappy,” was quoted as saying by Mirror.
They won’t feel the loneliness when things are going their way and results are coming. But when things go wrong and the pressure of expectations begins to hurt, sportspersons sometime need to fall back on a mentor or get their mind away from the sport to relax and refresh.
It is true that there is a fine balance between taking a break and losing focus once you are given a freehand. And while the onus would obviously be on these young shooters to find that balance, it would be interesting to see how the system protects them and enhances their potential.
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