Double Olympic medal winner Shooter Manu Bhaker said that Jaspal Rana will remain her “coach”, despite the fact that the Dronacharya Awardee will be used earlier this month as the High Performance Trainer for Pistool Discipline by the National Rifle Association of India (Nrai). Rana, a four-fold gold medal winner of Asian Games, had a fall-out with Manu for the Olympic Games in Tokyo, but they have reconciled to the Paris matches of last year, where the last history wrote by packing two bronze medals. Under Rana's personal guidance, Manu, who had a hard time after the Tokyo games, made a remarkable comeback and became the first Indian to win two medals since independence in a single edition of the Olympic Games.
She won bronze medals in 10m air gun and 10m air gun mixed team events in Paris to create history.
But it would not have been possible without Rana's guidance and Manu agrees.
Rana has now started as the high -performance coach for Pistool Shooters through the Nrai, but Manu still regards him as her mentor.
“To be honest, I only have to say one thing that he (Rana) My coach is everything I know and he is very good at what he does. He is very talented and he has been a great coach for me.
“Everything I know and everything I can say is that he is my coach. Of course he can also be someone else's coach, but for me he is my coach,” Manu said after winning the BBC Sportswomen of the Year 2024 Award on a beautiful position here on Monday evening.
Rana had previously served the national coach for the juniors for about a decade and built a strong foundation for Indian shooting.
After the Olympic Games in Paris, Manu took a long break and worked on her painful elbow.
On her return to the competitive circuit during the national tests here earlier this month, Manu finished second behind the Rhythm Sangwan, but she was satisfied with her performance.
“It was quite a decent comeback. I am satisfied with what I have achieved in the tests,” she said.
Speaking of her future plans, Manu said: “We will go for world cups in April and then we have some domestic competitions in June.
“It will be followed by a new World Cup in Munich. Then we will have the world championships, probably at the end of October or November. My target is the world championships. I want to peak for the world championships at the right time,” she added.
The season-dependent world championships are held in Cairo, Egypt, from 6-16 November.
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