Sports: Shooting; A Shot at Gold

Sports

India Today
Sep 14,1998

SHOOTING
A Shot At Gold

Jaspal Rana can't find a sponsor, has a gun that malfunctions, and at 22 talks of retiring. He's also India's best bet for a medal at this month's Commonwealth Games.

By Rohit Brijnath

Jaspal Rana In his house in Delhi, in a safe in his cupboard, sits his fortune. His worth as an athlete. It is beyond evaluation for there is not a man or woman among 980 million Indians whose cupboard stocks what his does. A nation's honour, after all, cannot have a price tag. We are speaking of one gold, one bronze from the 1994 Hiroshima Asian Games; two gold, a silver and a bronze from the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games. A winner in a nation that has a PhD in defeat.

What it also does is make pistol shooter Jaspal Rana, 22, singularly qualified to answer one question.

"What do you need to be the best -- a coach, guns, range, ammunition?"

"Electricity," he answers, his smile wry and fleeting.

It's a reasonable request. We're lounging in Delhi's Tughlakabad shooting range, where the ceiling fans stand at silent attention and the targets refuse to move because the lights are out. In 10 days the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games begin and the boy, who trap-shooter Mansher Singh says will "win gold and gold and gold but don't tell him", is not pleased.

This is a boy, never loud, but quick to fury, and you can feel his anger streaming down his veins like lava. He says he's going to emigrate to Australia and shoot there; he says he's going to retire in a few years because the government has no coherent sports policy; he says "who cares" when you wonder if his mouth might get him into trouble, adding, "no one chooses me, it's my scores that count". This rage has reason, for he tells you a story about what winning medals mean.

For years Samir Thapar of JCT sponsored him, his house, car, phone, salary, everything. Business being bad, Thapar begged off. So through his friends, says Rana, "I sent feelers to Pepsi, Sahara, Tatas, so many companies." His cost was Rs 10 lakh a year, pocket money in times of multi-crore cricket sponsorships. There were no replies, not one. "Companies talk big things but they do nothing," he says. Honour be damned, there must be days when he wants to dump those medals in a dustbin.

How gifted is Rana? Let's say this, if William Tell met him he would have packed up his crossbow and left town. Tell pierced an apple on a child's head with an arrow. This guy can drill an extra ear hole from 25 paces with a .32 pistol that has a fair kick. No joke, to watch him is a case of seeing is disbelieving.

In between chatter, he sets up a target 25 m away. From that distance the bulls-eye -- at two inches in diameter it's smaller than a doughnut -- is out of focus, a blur of black.

He fires, 10 shots, then with a laconic drawl, asks, "You want to see?"

What you see is this: nine shots in the bulls-eye, one just half a centimetre off. When national coach Sunny Thomas said "if this boy concentrates he can produce scores I can't even dream of" it sounded excessive. Not anymore.

But genius has been dwarfed by fate; Rana chose the wrong sport. Shooting, much like chess, has all the allure of watching a clock tick. The attraction of sport lies in motion; shooting is a study in stillness. It is not a sport for exhibitionists but more for meditative monks. It hardly detracts from the virtues Rana possesses, only to find them requires a closer look.

His stance comes first, the ability to stand as still as a frozen corpse. It is hard, requiring a foundation of muscle to keep the body steady as a pillar, often for nearly two hours. Then he lifts his arm, but as he raises his pistol it must stop, he says, "in line with the bulls-eye." In Centrefire Pistol the target appears for three seconds: if his pistol is a nanometre too high, a millimetre to the left, he's done for. His 589/600 score in that event, one point less than the world record, implies his perfection.

Like a violinist he must have sensitive hands, in soulful tune with his instrument. At the nationals he won gold in Centrefire, Rapid, Air and Standard Pistol, each a weapon of varying weight. Each gun also has its own peculiar trigger pressure, 500 gm for Air Pistol, 100 gm for Standard, and he must sense precisely how hard to squeeze, the slightest jerk and a gold is gone. "Breathing," he says finally, "remember that." The Standard Pistol event comprises five shots in 120 seconds, then five shots in 20 seconds, then five shots in 10 seconds (four series of each), each session demanding a specific breathing rhythm; to exhale at the wrong juncture is an error minuscule but fatal.

So he practises, six hours a day, till every movement turns into instinct. His sport is odd. Like golf, it is not the opponent who matters; instead, explains Rana, "you shoot against yourself". He's odd too. Only with weapon in hand does his rage turn into serenity, content in his silent cocoon of concentration. His coach Tibor Gonczal told him, "During competition you must become the most selfish person in the world. Only you and your technique must matter." Rana has won 600 medals at home, around 60 abroad -- he's learnt his lessons well.

It's a fair time for another question.

"Will you win gold in Malaysia?"

"If you think of gold", he replies, "you can't think of technique."

Maybe it's bothering him, the criticism that he's not winning gold with every shot he fires. At this year's World Championship he was fifth, at the Fort Benning Grand Prix he was sixth. It might have helped if his gun worked. Instead, his Centrefire Pistol malfunctioned. Of course, it would, it's junk metal, 17 years old. It's been a year since Rana applied for an import licence for a new weapon. He's still waiting.

But it's his distractions that irk Thomas. Often Rana is lobbying for some kid who needs a new pistol, and Thomas, exasperated, says, "He's a good kid, but I told him this is not the time for you to worry about that." Or else he is running away from practice in search of sponsors (JCT kindly kept him on eventually). But funny thing is, ask Sunny and he says he's not really too worried.

Could it be because Centrefire Pistol, Rana's favourite event, is on the Commonwealth list? Could it be because Rana shot a world-record-equalling 590/600 in front of Thomas a few days ago. Nah, this is what it is, the boy's a modern Wyatt Earp on the loose. Hell with a pistol. Before you leave the range, he takes another 10 shots at the target. This time he doesn't ask you to look. No need to. You know, and it is, nine shots in the bulls-eye, one outside.

Hope there's room in that safe for another medal.

Issue Contents | Write to us | Subscriptions | Syndication