On Friday, the world outside a quiet residence in Dehradun felt vastly different from the high-stakes, hyper-focused ecosystem of an Olympic shooting range. Yet, for Manu Bhaker, the silence was deafening. Standing alongside Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami to pay her final respects, the 24-year-old Olympian confronted a reality she admitted she was entirely unprepared for: the sudden, devastating passing of her coach and mentor, Jaspal Rana.
Rana, one of India’s most decorated pistol shooters and a legendary high-performance coach, died at the age of 49. The former Asian Games gold medallist suffered cardiac complications that first surfaced during his return journey from Munich to Delhi, following the recently-concluded ISSF World Cup.
Taking to social media on Saturday, she shared a poignant montage of photographs spanning their journey from 2018 to 2024. Accompanying the images were just two words that encapsulated a nation’s collective grief: “Irreparable loss”, paired with a heartbreak emoji.
“I still can’t believe it,” Manu told Olympics.com on Friday. “It is unbelievable news. I am struggling to process it. He was not just my coach, mentor or guide, but also a friend who understood me better than most people.”
For Manu, returning to the firing line means confronting a profound emptiness where a towering, familiar presence used to stand.
“Every medal, every success, every moment on the podium will always remind me of him,” she said. “A part of those victories belongs to him because he never stopped believing in me, even during the most difficult phases of my career. The shooting range will never feel the same again. His voice, his advice, his presence – they were a part of my everyday life. It hurts to think that I won’t see him standing there again.”
A BOND FORGED IN FIRE
The bond between the master and the prodigy was forged in the fire of Indian shooting’s elite junior program, which Rana headed. It was a relationship defined by unyielding discipline on the range and profound empathy off it. Yet, it was not without its fractures. A highly publicised split ahead of the Tokyo Olympics saw them part ways – a period that coincided with Manu’s heartbreaking pistol malfunction in Tokyo, an incident that left her mentally shattered and contemplating walking away from the sport altogether.
The turning point came in 2023. Gathering her courage, Manu called her former coach to ask if they could train together again. Rana, known for his uncompromising stance on discipline, found himself unable to say no.
“When she approached me, I had no reason to say no to her,” Rana had recalled in an interview to India Today after their historic triumph at the Chateauroux Shooting Range during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
“She had the courage to call me. She brought it up, I just said yes.”
That reunion resurrected Manu’s career. Rana did not just fine-tune her technique; he rebuilt her psyche, introducing her to the spiritual grounding of the Bhagavad Gita to find balance. He reminded her of her own worth.
“She is not someone who can be easily forgotten,” Rana had proudly declared after Manu became the first Indian female shooter to win an Olympic medal, clinching bronze in the 10m air pistol. “I helped her understand that there is nothing that she can’t achieve.”
Under his guidance, the shooter who missed the finals in Tokyo became a composed, double-Olympic bronze medallist in Paris.
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