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Shooter Swapnil Kusale isn't really superstitious but when fellow mates Akhil Sheoran and Shriyanka Sadangi gifted him a small key chain to ward off evil eye, he readily accepted it before boarding the flight to Paris for the Olympics.
Swapnil has found himself being defeated by fate in several top-notch competitions, including the Asian Games in 2023 and the 2022 World Championships in Cairo, where just one shot -- and a few decimal points -- pushed him to fourth place.
But in Paris, the 29-year-old set the record straight, becoming the first Indian ever to win a bronze medal in 50m rifle 3-positions event at the Olympics.
While Akhil and Shriyanka, both 50m rifle 3-positions shooters, had secured Olympic quota places for the country, they could not make the cut for the Games following the Olympic Selection Trials conducted by the National Rifle Association of India.
"Just before I was to travel to Paris, My best friends Akhil and Shriyanka came to meet me and gifted a key chain to guard me against the evil eye. They said, 'bhai jeet ke aana hai' (return a winner)."
That, and the learnings imparted by personal coach Deepali Deshpande and 'elder sister' Tejaswini Sawant, says Swapnil, played a huge role in his Olympic success.
"The three of us -- me, Akhil and Shriyanka -- have been together for years and they take care of me whenever I am in Delhi. We share a very strong bond. Akhil is like my brother and Shriyanka my sister. We are a family whenever we are in camp or competition... so many years we have spent together since our junior days," Swapnil told PTI on Saturday.
Swapnil, who hails from Kolhapur in Maharashtra, says that it's the hard work put in by former international rifle shooter Deepali that has helped him achieve success in his maiden Olympics.
"Deepali ma'am is like my second mother. She has seen me shoot since 2012. She knows what I require, when I tend to get emotional or what makes me feel sad... what makes me happy. So, that mother-son relationship goes back to my early days of shooting. She has intricately gone into every aspect of my shooting," says Swapnil, who missed a medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games last year only because of just one rank bad shot.
When in Pune, he prefers to train with another shooting stalwart and former world champion in 50m rifle prone Tejaswini.
"Teju di (Tejaswini) is like my elder sister. She is an Olympian and a very experienced shooter. Both of us belong to Kolhapur, so we train together in Pune. If I commit an error in shooting she corrects it immediately," says the TTE with Indian railways.
'Journey has just started'
Swapnil says the bronze medal is just a stepping stone in his quest to win an Olympic gold.
"My dream is not yet complete. It is to win a gold medal at the Olympics. That is my goal. The medal that I won in Paris is normal for me, and one stage near to my dream, if I can put it that way," he says.
'Asian Games fourth place left me traumatised'
Swapnil added that one bad shot of 7.6, which cost him a medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games, had left him disturbed but the intervention of his mental trainer put him back on track.
"During the Asian Games when I finished fourth, I was in trauma. But my psychologist handled it very well and prepared me on how to ignore the Hangzhou debacle.
"He asked me not to think about that poor score and just focus on the shots that were really good, visualise them, how did you do that. So, once I started doing that, I started getting better scores in the finals. He told me, 'If there is a poor shot just erase it from your memory and concentrate on the remaining shots'."
The MS Dhoni factor
Being a TTE with the Railways, Swapnil relates himself more with cricket legend Mahendra Singh Dhoni than shooting greats like Abhinav Bindra and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore.
"It's not like have not learnt a lot from big shooters like Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang and RVS Rathore.
"I relate to Dhoni more because he was a ticket collector in the Railways and I am also a TC. We all have seen the movie (M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story), where he wanted to realise his dream of becoming a cricketer and followed his instincts. I have a similar mindset.
"Another thing which really stands out in Dhoni is his calm temperament. He never gets flustered whatever be the situation. These are the same things we require in shooting. One bad shot and we get rattled. So, we don't have to do that but remain calm. That is the most important thing. Those are the things I learnt from Dhoni," he added.