Chateauroux, Aug 1: Swapnil Kusale doesn’t quite know just why it has taken so long for him to be at the Olympics, where he landed a medal on debut on Thursday.
A medal that is definitely life-changing for him personally but also historic in significance for Indian shooting given that it’s the first time that a rifle shooter has managed to do it in the physically draining 50m 3 positions event.
Ask him why it took him so long to arrive, he was as candid as one can be.
“May be I was not as strong mentally,” says the 28-year-old son of a teacher father and sarpanch mother from Kambalwadi village near Maharashtra’s Kolhapur.Kusale began shooting in 2009, made his international debut in 2012 but it took him another 12 years to make his Olympic debut.
The 50m rifle shooter was not in the scheme of things in Rio 2016 and missed out on a Tokyo 2020 berth narrowly as per the then selection criteria which gave more importance to performance in international events.He did not leave anything to chance for the Paris Games. He secured a quota place for India with a fourth place finish in the 50m rifle three positions at 2022 World Championships before maintaining the consistency in the domestic trials in March and April earlier this year.One could say it was fairly good going for a shooter whose father took a loan to get him his first rifle.“That was long back, that loan has been cleared,” he said.Here, the expectations were higher from the much younger Aishwary Pratap Tomar in the 50m rifle three positions but it was Kusale who made history by becoming the first finalist from India in the event.
Despite feeling the butterflies in the stomach on the morning of the final, Kusale was able to control his emotions to land a historic bronze.“Today the heartbeat was on the higher side. I just tried to control my breathing and did not try anything different. Everyone is more or less the same at this level,” said Kusale, a ticket collector with Indian Railways who doesn’t have to report for duty because of his shooting commitments. (PTI)
