When Anish Bhanwala finished 13th at the Paris Olympics and didn’t make the six-man final at the Chateauroux shooting range, he called his father Jagpal Bhanwala up. The conversation veered around his first Olympic experience being a positive learning curve and how that experience would shape his career going forwards. On Sunday evening, Bhanwala, who has shown rapid strides over the last two years, became the first Indian shooter to ever win a medal in the men’s 25m rapid fire event at the World Championships with a silver in the final at Cairo, Egypt.
“People ask me about the disappointment in Paris but then I always saw the Paris Olympics as something which taught me a lot and also which gave me the joy to compete at the biggest stage. And I took a break of more than four months post Paris just to relax and to see the positives of Paris. Sometimes when you shoot constantly, you overthink but I just wanted to see Paris as a good memory. Prior to this, I had put the screenshot of my phone as the rest of the three positions for next month’s World Cup final in Doha as my target just to give an indirect challenge to my mind for a month, but to win the silver medal, India’s first in this event at World Championships also ends the disappointments of the 2018, 2022 and 2023 World Championships,” Bhanwala told The Indian Express from Cairo.
Restarting after Paris
It was in April this year that Bhanwala competed in the first World Cup of the year in Argentina followed by the World Cup in Lima. He finished 13th and 11th in the two World Cups before an 18th place finish at the Munich World Cup in June. It would mean that the Indian’s last final appearance at a World Cup had come in Doha in 2023, where he won the bronze, another first for India.
“After the break, I was clear in my mind that I would be starting from the beginning. The focus was increasing the intensity and I understood that I am changing as a shooter. I was shooting with different techniques prior to Tokyo, different prior to Paris and at Paris. I changed my grip this year and faced some issues before my coach Harpreet Singh got me a grip, which suited me,” adds Bhanwala.
On Sunday, Bhanwala shot a qualification score of 585-22x to qualify at second spot with Clement Bessaguet topping the qualification with 589 and Zhixin Ni (585), Emaneul Mueller (585), Maksym Horodynets (583) and Olivier Geis (582) completing the six-shooter final lineup.
Bhanwala would be tied second with Mueller, Bessaguet and Horodynets with 16 shots and Ni leading with 17 shots after the fourth series and Geis bowing out of the final. A four by each of Bhanwala, Mueller, Horodynets and Bessageut in the next series saw them in the joint lead with Ni shooting a two to bow out of the final.
A two by Bhanwala and Mueller in the next series meant the Indian faced his first shoot-off of the final and assured himself of a medal after edging out Mueller in the second shoot-off 4:2. With Mueller eliminated, Bhanwala was tied with Horodynets after both made two of their five attempts with Bessaguet taking the lead with 29 shots.
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Bhanwala and Harodynets then found themselves in yet another shootout, this time to decide the third place. After both were level on the first shootoff, Bhanwala made four shots to assure himself of a silver before Bessaguet won the gold. In all the shoot-offs, Bhanwala shot second. “Yes, shoot-offs can drain one mentally but then I was telling myself to just focus on my technique,” says Bhanwala.
London Olympics silver medallist Vijay Kumar Sharma, who was in the field when the then 15-year-old Bhanwala had become the national champion in 2017, believes this medal will make Bhanwala more mature in terms of the intense rapid fire pistol training. “Whenever I have competed against Anish in recent years, I have been impressed with his learning power and he has made improvements in his shooting in a short span of time at the senior level too. This World Championships silver medal shows that he is developing into what we call a ‘mature’ shooter in Rapid Fire. In the coming years, the key will be consistency as well to stay with the technique which is working for him,” said Sharma.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd