Boria Majumdar in Paris
Ever tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”- Samuel Beckett
We will never know if anyone ever repeated these words from Beckett to Manu Bhaker. Perhaps not. But Manu did exactly what Beckett had suggested. She tried in Tokyo and failed. Failed poorly. Tried again at the Asian Games. This time, she failed better. And thereafter came the turnaround. With Jaspal Rana in her corner, she tried again. By then, the fear of failure had been conquered and steel instilled in her as she stepped out on to the range in Paris.
In Tokyo, Manu was fighting demons in her own mind. The first sign of victory was when she decided to go back to Rana braving all odds. She was soon trolled on social media, but the twitterati aren’t the ones shooting in Paris. Manu is. Rana had nailed it by exposing his student to the harshest of training regimes. Again, at the Asian Games, she wasn’t great, but as Beckett suggested, she tried and failed better.
Manu might not win a second medal here in Paris. She might yet again fail in the mixed and sports-pistol events. In fact, she might falter on Monday. But none of this will matter to her any more. For, she will try again. And try harder. And even when she fails, she will pick herself up to try and fail better. That’s the biggest learning from the medal. Failure is no longer feared.
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If I am asked to identify one thing that Manu did well here in Paris, the answer is simple. She handled pressure better. Perhaps the most-used word when it comes to sport. Everyone who has played sport will tell you there is always pressure. From fans, parent bodies, sponsors, family and, most importantly, from yourself. At the end of the day, a sportsperson is alone, grappling with his or her mind. A mind that is constantly fighting to be freed of clutter. Of all the thoughts that keep flooding in, of the possibilities that keep disturbing the equilibrium, and finally, all the hope and expectation of what might be.
In trying to explain pressure, I will turn to Abhinav Bindra, India’s first individual gold-medal winner at the summer Olympics. Abhinav, for the record, came the closest at Rio 2016, eventually losing out in a tie-break. It was the closest one could get to a medal without winning it. Was it pressure or was it just that moment? Again, we will never know. But as Abhinav says, it just happens.
In that moment when Abhinav was shooting the final shot, he was sure. There was no doubting his ability. Till the 17th shot, he was in silver-medal position, and in qualification, he had shot the best final series of 10 shots. But that one particular shot did not work. And he knew it the moment he fired it. A slight shake of the head was proof of what he must have felt. Four years of work had come to nothing and it was a bitter pill to swallow. Even for Abhinav, who had seen it all.
Beijing 2008 was different, the other extreme. The final shot from Abhinav was a 10.8 and that landed him the gold. Millimetres between a gold medal, and no medal at all. That’s how sport is. And that’s what pressure does to you – makes you the best or worst on a given day.
Having overcome her innermost fears, Manu was already a winner. With Rana, she had started afresh. Experimented with a new approach and started over. The past defeats are history. The future is in her hands. The medal is the present, and pressure no longer an issue. That’s the reality of Manu Bhaker here in Paris.
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