Manu Bhaker News9 EXCLUSIVE: Was prepared for the medal, says double Olympic bronze winner

New Delhi: Manu Bhaker scripted history at the Paris Olympics 2024 as she became the first individual athlete to win two medals in a single edition of the Summer Games. The 22-year-old young shooter bagged two bronze medals in women’s 10m air pistol and mixed team 10m air pistol along with Sarabjot Singh.

The two podium finished has bolstered her resume at a young age with gold medals achieved at the World Championships, Asian Games, Commonweath Games and Youth Olympic Games. Manu missed a third medal by a whisker after finishing fourth in the women’s 25m pistol final but that won’t take away the grit displayed by the Delhi shooter to finish as India’s top performer in the French capital.

Manu, who became the first female shooter from India to claim a medal at the Olympics, was confident of the success thanks to her meticulous training sessions in Germany and Switzerland.

“We had trained in a way that we were hoping for a medal. It did not surprised me or catch me off guard. I was very much prepared for it (the medal),” Manu told News9 in an exclusive interview after returning to India.

“I did not know whether it’s going to be one medal or two medals or what is the colour of the medal going to be but I was prepared for a medal. The training part actually helped me survive through my matches,” she added.

Manu will be India’s flagbearer alongside hockey veteran PR Sreejesh for the Paris Olympics closing ceremony on Sunday. Once she again comes back to India, the double-Olympic medallist wants to regain her fitness standards and find enough sleep.

“I would really want to work on my fitness again. Earlier in my 11-13 age, I was very athletic kind of girl. Karate, boxing and Marshal arts was my forte and not shooting. Shooting is a very calm sport and it was opposite of what I use to do. I would really love to work on my fitness levels again. I would want to get some kind of sleep perhaps 8-9 hours every night,” the 22-year-old mentioned.

Manu Bhaker opens up on ghosts of Tokyo

Manu Bhaker’s journey at Paris Olympics is one of the best comebacks in the Indian sporting circuit. She endured a gun malfunction during the qualification round of women’s 10m air pistol and missed the final. Talking about the criticism she faced three years ago, Manu said:

“The turn that took in the Tokyo Games for me and how the backlash I got after Tokyo. That was something that really triggered something inside of me. I was like……. I can’t do bad performance and I just can’t deal with it. The was really a bad phase for me, although every athletes cannot stay at the peak for the entire time.”

Manu is one of the five Indian athletes to win two individual medals at the Olympics. Norman Pritchard (1900 Olympics), Sushil Kumar (2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Olympics), PV Sindhu (2016 Rio Olympics and 2020 Tokyo Olympics) and Neeraj Chopra (2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2024 Paris Olympics) are the others to achieve the milestone.

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 In an exclusive interview with News9’s Senior Editor Meha Bhardwaj Alter, Manu Bhaker spoke about her experience at the Paris Olympics, medal expectations, learnings from Tokyo Olympics failure, and wish to work on her fitness standards again.  Other Sports Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today