Who is Manu Bhaker? All you need to know about the young pistol shooter competing at Paris Olympics 2024
Manu Bhaker, the young and talented athlete, will be the only Indian shooter to compete in more than one individual event — the women's 10m air pistol and the women's 25m pistol - at the Paris Olympics 2024.
Hailing from Jhajjar, Haryana, Manu Bhaker decided to take up the sport when she was 14. Interestingly, until 14, she took part in other sports like boxing, tennis and skating, securing medals at the national games.
Her father, Ram Kishan Bhaker, who works as a chief engineer in the Merchant Navy, invested INR 150,000 as Manu took up competitive shooting.
Manu Bhaker’s first taste of success
She tasted success in the National Shooting Championships 2017, stunning the Olympian and former World No. 1 shooter Heena Sidhu.
She broke Sidhu’s score of 240.8, accumulating 242.3 points to win the 10m air pistol final. In total, she won nine gold medals in that competition.
Winning spree in ISSF World Cups
She stole the limelight at the ISSF World Cup in 2018 at Guadalajara, Mexico, breaking the junior World Cup record in the qualification rounds to make the cut for the women’s 10m air pistol final.
She secured a gold medal in the final moving past her opponents - Olympic gold medalist Anna Korakaki, three-time World Cup medalist Celine Goberville and local player Alejandra Zavala, shooting 237.5.
Additionally, she paired up with Om Prakash to win a gold medal in the 10m air pistol mixed event in the same World Cup.
Commonwealth Games gold and history in Youth Olympics
Later in the Commonwealth Games 2018 in Australia, she secured a gold medal in the women’s 10m air pistol event. Unfortunately, at the Asian Games in 2018, she missed out on bagging the medal, finishing at sixth in the final.
However, she made history at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Argentina, winning the gold medal in the 10m air pistol event. She emerged as the first Indian shooter and first female athlete from India to win the gold medal at the Youth Olympics.
Later in the 2019 ISSF World Cup, she won four gold medals in 10m air pistol mixed team events at four different legs in New Delhi, Beijing, Munich, Rio de Janeiro.
Unfortunate turn of events at Tokyo Olympics
Just when everything was going well, Manu Bhaker’s Olympic debut in Tokyo turned out to be an unfortunate one. At the qualification moments of the event, her pistol developed a snag, forcing her to move away from the competition to fix it.
Despite making a comeback after replacing it with a new one, she couldn’t move past the qualification rounds in women’s 10m air pistol, 10m air pistol mixed and 25m pistol events.
Post Tokyo Olympics
After the conclusion of the Tokyo Olympics, Manu Bhaker emerged as the junior world champion at the ISSF Junior World Championships in Lima in 2021. She bagged four gold medals in 10m air pistol, 10m air pistol team, 10m air pistol mixed team, and 25m air pistol team. Additionally, she bagged a bronze medal in the 25m air pistol event.
She managed to bag a silver medal in the 25m pistol event at the Cairo World Championships and a gold medal in the same event at the Asian Games 2023 in Hangzhou, China.
In the Bhopal leg of the ISSF World Cup series 2023, Manu Bhaker bagged a bronze medal in 25m pistol event. Most recently in February 2024, she settled for a bronze medal in the Spain leg of the ISSF World Cup series 2024 in the 10m air pistol event.