Saurabh Chaudhary, one of Indian filmmaking’s most prodigious talents, says he is emerging from a career of mystery and funk. He’s not there yet.
The 24-year-old did not get the result that would have heralded his comeback in style on Sunday morning. Competing in the final of the men’s 10m air pistol competition at the 67th National Shooting Championships at the Karni Singh Range, Saurabh got off to a bad start. Although he tried to get back into the race, Saurabh ultimately finished fifth.
Despite finishing outside the podium, Saurabh didn’t look too sorry for himself. “I’m not sad. How can I be? This is the first time I have participated in the final of a national championship since 2021,” he said. The sportiestr.
If you told someone in 2021, this is what Saurabh Chaudhary was going to say in four years, there’s no way they would have believed it. For one thing, Saurabh doesn’t speak in monosyllables. At the time, Saurabh was the closest to a shooting savant that India had ever seen, with his enormous ability on the field matched only by a notoriously brusque character at the ‘outside.
Just months before winning gold at the 2021 national championships, Saurabh was India’s top hope at the Tokyo Olympics. The 19-year-old entered this competition with 12 medals, including six gold at the ISSF World Cup, to his credit. He had registered a record at the Asian Games by becoming the youngest gold medalist at the Asian Games in Jakarta. He apparently didn’t seem afraid of the big stage.
The Games themselves did not go as well as he had hoped. He dominated the Olympic qualification in the men’s 10m pistol, but finished fifth in the final. He further finished seventh in the mixed team event with Manu Bhaker. Although he didn’t get the desired result, Saurabh’s composure was noticed by many. Better things were surely just around the corner.
India’s Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary compete in the 10m air pistol mixed team event at the Tokyo Summer Olympics on July 27, 2021. | Photo credit: Gurinder Osan/PTI
India’s Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary compete in the 10m air pistol mixed team event at the Tokyo Summer Olympics on July 27, 2021. | Photo credit: Gurinder Osan/PTI
But while Manu’s career has been booming since the Tokyo Games, crowned by two medals at the Paris Games, Saurabh’s has dramatically collapsed. Saurabh hasn’t even been part of an Indian team since 2022. In what was perhaps his lowest point, Saurabh, who was once regularly flirting with the world record, shot a dismal 557/600 in the qualifying round of the 2023 National Games in Goa.
Uncertain times
It would have been easy to make a mistake at the time. “I know there was something missing in what I was doing. I knew I wasn’t shooting well, but I didn’t feel like there was anything wrong with me. But sometimes it takes a long time to figure things out and figure out what’s wrong in the first place. At that time (in Goa), I was trying something different. This didn’t work for me. During this period (of poor performance), I even changed guns before returning to the one I was originally using,” he says.
There was no shortage of people who had their own suggestions for him. “A lot of coaches tried to tell me what to do. But I always returned to Samaresh (Jung), sir. I have been working with him since 2018. At that time, even though the results were not coming, I just continued doing what I had always done,” he says.
Even though Saurabh tried to persevere, the results were not really felt.
Even though Manu called him the “best shooter of this generation” before the Olympic team selection trials for Paris 2024, Saurabh was not among the six shooters who managed to qualify.
Some have argued that Saurabh could have been given some kind of wildcard for the trials and even that he should have been part of the national team in some way. Saurabh understands why that wasn’t the case though.
“Even after leaving the national team, I never felt like I was treated unfairly. I used my sponsor money to compete in two World Cups (the Rio World Cup and the World Cup in Changwon, South Korea – both in 2023). But if I didn’t play, why should I expect to be picked? I couldn’t feel bad because I wasn’t at that level. I didn’t deserve it. How could I feel bad for not getting something I didn’t deserve? he asks.
There is no doubt that he earned his place when he appeared in the final of a national championship. Earlier this week, he achieved a qualifying score of 591. This is his highest score ever in a competition and just 3 short of the current world record.
It’s not just the score that Saurabh is happy with. It’s because he’s finally shooting with confidence again. “What I liked the most was the confidence I felt in competition. When you pull the trigger, you want to know that the shot will go where you fired it. That’s the main thing. It’s not like you’re shooting just to get it over with or things aren’t going where you want them to. The score has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t matter whether you shoot high tens or low nines. Confidence is something you feel before your shot even hits the target. You want to feel like you did your best. I think the confidence is coming back now,” he says.
Saurabh says he slowly built his confidence. “I started to feel like things were getting better at the end of 2023. I then competed in two national trials and shot a 581 and a 586 in those competitions. At that moment, I felt like I was doing the right thing,” he says.
READ: Saurabh Chaudhary returns to action at ISSF World Cup in Rio
While Saurabh says he felt good shooting even during the final, his coach Samaresh knows why the score doesn’t reflect that. “He was trying to shoot faster than his natural timing. He was pulling the trigger because he was getting too impatient,” he said.
Samaresh is not too worried about this. “Finals are not just for shooters. They are really intended for spectators. Saurabh shoots well and you can see it in his qualifying scores. The final performance will come. There’s really nothing wrong with him. He never had any real problems with his technique. Technically, there isn’t much to change about him. He knows how to aim and pull the trigger. But he had to find a way to translate that into matches. He’s getting there now,” he said.
According to his coach, even though Saurabh already has everything he needs as a shooter, to get his form back he needs to curb everything he has been doing. “It never seems like a good thing for a shooter to be left out of the Indian team. But that was indeed the case for Saurabh. The time he was away from shooting for India ended up helping him,” he says.
Turn off to turn on
Saurabh also agrees with this assessment. “Everyone wants to be part of the Indian team. But when I was on the team, I was constantly competing. I haven’t really been able to practice. I was just focused on winning one way or another. When you have a series of competitions, you don’t really have time to train. I think I needed that break to be able to get back to that state,” he says.
But Saurabh’s turnaround is not because he is practicing more now. It’s quite the opposite. “I must be the only coach who wants his athlete to train less. Saurabh is someone who devotes too many hours to training. One of the things I had to do was tell him not to overtrain. When you overtrain, you burn out. Shooting is not primarily a physical sport. Your mind needs to relax. On the way, you think about shooting. When you leave, you have to think about something else,” says Samaresh.
This was difficult for Saurabh to achieve. “Even now he has no other hobbies. He is obsessed with shooting. Whenever he has free time, he will say: let’s do some filming. (Let’s go shoot),” the coach said.
Over the past year, Saurabh has been forced to tone down his intensity somewhat. Despite being part of the National Center of Excellence (NCoE) in New Delhi since 2022, Saurabh has been advised to spend only 15 days a month there. “I have to tell him not to come to NCoE and train as much as he does. When he comes here, he’s at the hostel 24/7. He is always near people who are shooting. He wakes up and there are shooters around him. When he eats breakfast, there are shooters around him. His mind needed a break and for that he has to go home,” says Samaresh.
According to Samaresh, Saurabh should choose to return home more often even though, here too, he has a shooting range built in a cowshed. “When he’s home, he has at least 10 other responsibilities. It’s important for him to stop shooting,” he says. This is of course easier said than done for Saurabh. “I’ve been shooting since I was young. That’s all I know really and that matters to me, it’s hard to find anything else to do,” he says.
Samaresh has no doubt that Saurabh will change. “This version of Saurabh is as good as it was in 2018 when I started working with him. But now he’s just older and more mature. He is a remarkable shooter. At his best, he was so consistent that it was almost inevitable that he would experience a decline. But things are better now,” he says.
Saurabh himself is happy to take things as they come. While he may have set a career record, he’s not thinking about improving it or giving much thought to the Olympic cycle that has just begun. “I have no goals or expectations. I just want to concentrate on my filming. With time, things get better. Despite this, I never thought I deserved to shoot a certain score. I don’t think that way even now. I don’t hold any expectations of myself. I’m just doing what I always do,” he says.
