When it comes to sports, especially in Olympics, Haryana has provided some of the finest athletes to the country, but mostly in the form of boxers and wrestlers. Manu Bhaker developed a contrasting taste, however, only after trying sports like tennis, skating and boxing in school. Sports was where Manu’s passion lied, and she also excelled in a form of martial arts called ‘thang ta’, winning medals at the national level. Bhaker eventually took to shooting just as fish takes to water, giving early signs that she was meant to reach the absolute pinnace in the sport. The journey finally culminated in a glorious moment as she claimed a historic bronze medal in 10m air pistol at the Paris Olympics 2024.
Manu made the call to try her hand at shooting when she was just 14 – just after the 2016 Rio Olympics had ended. Having tried multiple sports, Bhaker instantly fell in love with shooting. Within a week, she asked her father to get her a sport shooting pistol as she wanted to take up the sport professionally.
Her father, who has been a supportive figure throughout Bhaker’s journey, bought her a gun without much contemplation, and the rest is history.
Manu has been waiving the tri-colour high at national and global events since she was a teenager. At the 2017 national shooting championships, Manu Bhaker grabbed the spotlight as she defeated Olympian and former world No. 1 Heena Sidhu. It was her record score of 242.3 that re-wrote the history books, putting her score at the top of the record books in the 10m Air Pistol category.
She also won a silver medal at the 2017 Asian junior championships and it was in 2018 that Manu announced her arrival at the world level, with making her debut in International Sport Shooting Federation (ISSF) World Cup at Guadalajara, breaking the junior world record in the qualification round of the event.
At just 16 years old, Manu became the youngest Indian to win a gold medal at an ISSF World Cup. Bhaker kept winning gold medals in the individual and mixed team event in the 10m Air Pistol.
At the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia, Manu Bhaker registered her name in history books, scripting a new Games record to grab the women’s 10m Air Pistol gold.
Manu Bhaker also sealed her entry into the Tokyo Olympics with a fourth-place finish at the 2019 Munich ISSF World Cup. She then added a gold and silver medal in the 10m Air Pistol at the 2021 New Delhi ISSF World Cup, lifting the country’s hopes of a medal in shooting at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. But, a pistol malfunction cost her a spot on the podium, after Bhaker had topped the qualification round.
The shooter from Haryana, however, was keen to make amends on Paris.
