New Delhi: In a historic achievement, Manu Bhaker has secured a bronze medal in the women’s 10m air pistol event at the Paris 2024 Olympics. This marks the first medal for India at the Paris 2024 Olympics and the first Olympic medal in shooting for India since the London 2012 Olympic Games. With this achievement, Manu becomes the first Indian female shooter to win a medal in the Olympics, a day after she became the first female shooter to reach an Olympic final in an individual event in the last 20 years.
Manu Bhaker became the fifth Indian shooter to clinch a medal in the Olympic Games after Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore (2004 Athens), Abhinav Bindra (2008 Beijing), Vijay Kumar (2012 London), and Gagan Narang (2012 London).
Manu Bhaker finished 3rd with a score of 580 in the qualification rounds, also shooting the highest number of Perfect Scores (27). She became the first Indian female shooter to reach an Olympic final in an individual event in the last 20 years, following Suma Shirur, who reached the final of the 10m Air Rifle event in Athens 2004. She also became the first Indian woman to qualify for the 10m Air Pistol Women's final round at any Olympics.
Manu Bhaker's training base is the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range in New Delhi, and she was born in Jhajjar, Haryana. Key government interventions and financial assistance for the Paris cycle included assistance for ammunition and weapon servicing, pellet and ammunition testing, and barrel selection. There was also assistance towards training with her personal coach Jaspal Rana in Luxembourg for the Olympics preparation. Financial assistance under TOPS amounted to Rs. 28,78,634, and under the Annual Calendar for Training and Competition (ACTC), it was Rs. 1,35,36,155.
Among Manu Bhaker's achievements are a gold medal in the 25m Pistol Team event at the Asian Games (2022), a gold medal in the 25m Pistol Team event at the World Championship in Baku (2023), and a quota place for the Paris Games 2024 at the Asian Shooting Championship in Changwon (2023). She also won a bronze medal in the 25m Pistol event at the World Cup in Bhopal (2023), a silver medal in the 25m Pistol event at the World Championship in Cairo (2022), and two gold medals in the 10m Air Pistol individual and women's team events at the World University Games in Chengdu (2021).
Manu Bhaker is an Indian Olympian who competes in shooting. Born in Jhajjar, Haryana, a state known for its boxers and wrestlers, Manu Bhaker took to sports like tennis, skating, and boxing in school. She also participated in a form of martial arts called ‘thang ta’, winning medals at the national level. She then impulsively decided to try her hand at shooting when she was just 14 – just after the 2016 Rio Olympics ended – and loved it.
At the 2017 National Shooting Championships, Manu Bhaker stunned Olympian and former world No. 1 Heena Sidhu, winning nine gold medals. Manu shot a record score of 242.3 to erase Sidhu’s mark to win the 10m Air Pistol final. 2018 was Bhaker’s breakthrough year as a shooter as she became a teenage sensation, bagging a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games at the age of 16.
n the 2018 International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup held in Guadalajara, Mexico, Bhaker won the gold medal in the Women's 10-metre air pistol, defeating Mexico's Alejandra Zavala, a two-time champion. Manu Bhaker also sealed an Olympic quota place with a fourth-place finish at the 2019 Munich ISSF World Cup. However, her debut at the Games did not go as planned. Shortly after Tokyo 2020, Manu Bhaker became the junior world champion in the women's 10m air pistol at Lima, won the women's 25m pistol silver at the 2022 Cairo World Championships, and secured a gold in the same event at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou. /BI
