Heena Sidhu keeps it simple, bags quota on first day of Asia Olympic qualifiers

Heena Sidhu in 10m Air Pistol during Asia Olympic Qualifying Competition for Shooting in New Delhi. (EXPRESS PHOTO BY PRAVEEN KHANNA)

Manfred Kurzer, a Berliner in his mid-40s, is a sort of a relic from the past who runs a well-oiled shooting range at Frankfurt. An Olympic gold medallist from 2004 in the men’s 10m running target – now a defunct event at the Games – this repository of knowledge and technique, was courted and befriended by Ronak Pandit in order to solve an important part of a jigsaw – which was Heena Sidhu’s shooting scores in 10m air pistol. On Wednesday, when India won its ninth Olympic quota – Heena shot a stupendous 387 in qualification and a sufficient 199.4 in Finals – the Frankfurter on whose range the husband-wife (also coach-ward) duo often train, was evoked even as Indians celebrated sending yet another contender in pistol to the Rio Games.

Sidhu is a severely hard working and reliable shooter with a calm head and a steady technique. From Day 1 of Olympic qualification, she was expected to earn herself a quota without too much fuss or fanfare – such have been her consistency and prolific scores (even on bad days she could shoot 382-383). Yet, till the last day of qualification for the 26-year-old, Sidhu was compelled to go stalking after a quota like a man chases his elusive shadow.

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Since September 2015, Sidhu had won gold medals at two Asian events – beating a good and fairly decent field at Asian air Gun and the troubled event at Kuwait. Earlier, at Korea, she’d shot 385 and incredulously seen herself not making the finals after she relaxed too early and shot last three 9s. At Gabala, she tied scores, the inner-10 failing her again. It made her doubt herself, try too hard, pounce at result-oriented desperate shooting – everything except staying true to herself and her calm disposition that helps her shoot steady scores, over and over again.

Agonising over what was going wrong even before that – she would fumble and implode in finals, then when she was prepped for finals, fail to even enter them – the pistol shooting couple tried tweaks and complete overhauls, trials and errors, till they arrived at a plan that suited her style and temperament.

Kurzer, the German, helped along the way. In running target, as the name explains, a target whizzes sideways forcing a shooter to mentally be prepared to shoot at a flashing motion – something that Heena adopted in her pistol while she played matches against the German rifle great. The technique loosely involves letting go of the trigger without obsessing over the centre of the target.

As she went about chasing the quota – the journey itself resembling following a moving target from one venue to next – Sidhu would arrive at a reasonably reliable repetitive process of shooting, that gave her three gold medals in the past few months and the desired quota place.

“Our goal going into this meet was that we need to be prepared for it as if we’re shooting Olympics today. There’s no such thing as peaking. If I’m told she’s shooting Olympics tomorrow, it was my job to make her ready for that,” Pandit said. Leading in qualifying (she shot series of 97, 96, 96 and 98 with the highest 10s), Heena would grab the lead early in the elimination Finals, and keep it till the end.
She has one of the longest shooting sequence habits – she poises for the shot longer than most and shoots at the absolute last moment – but on Wednesday, Heena would also wait for her competitors to make mistakes (shoot the nervous 7s or 8s and fall behind).

In the finals, there were two Iranians and a Singaporean battling for two quotas alongside India’s best pistol shooter. Heena would shoot in clustered groupings (all pellets bunch up near one spot) always a good sign of consistency and being in control, and though there were fewer inner-10s (just two 10.5 and 10.7) than she’d have liked she would hover above the average to lead till the end.

Ahead of London, Heena had been controversially given the quota ahead of Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, looking at her promise. This time she was glad to earn her place. “My case was stronger even then, my form was good,” she says, happy that this time she goes to the Olmpics having to perform and aim for a medal rather than ‘prove a point.’

Before that the duo put in effort to rest. Guilty of over-thinking and stressing, Heena Sidhu needed to cultivate a habit of resting. For 21 days after Kuwait, she would not touch the weapon, and even post that train for two days and stay away from the range for four days. “I always pay attention to resting,” she says.

Yet, her training intensity had doubled in the days leading upto the Delhi do-or-die chance. “We doubled our training shots, shooting 200 in preparation for 100,” Pandit says. School children were ferried to the Mumbai and Pune ranges to create a din in which she could find her zone. Recordings of announcements, booing and cheering were blared in practice, in order to cut out all the worst-case scenarios and repeats of past failures.

Protein deficiencies were ironed out to enable her to train longer hours and reduce strain on her back and neck.

The Olympics will be an altogether different challenge. “We need 8 weeks to get her working on equipment to help her shoot higher-10s,” Pandit says. The Chinese and Koreans shoot with robotic proficiency, but Heena Sidhu believes she has it in her to match those scores at the biggest Games. A 387 wasn’t a bad start. “It was important to win in style here and not just scrape through. The confidence is doubled for the Olympics now,” Pandit says. Somewhere in Germany, Manfred Kurzer will be happy the moving targets are still useful in today’s age a dozen years after they went out of vogue at the Games.