oṃ tryámbakaṃ yajāmahe sugandhíṃ puṣṭi-vardhánam
urvārukam íva bandhánān mṛtyor mukṣīya mā ‘mṛtā́t
About a year ago, Swapnil Kusale had the above Rig Vedic verse tattooed down his spine. These days, the words in Sanskrit are spoken by Hindus in times of great stress and are said to bestow you with longevity. The original intention of the verse — a moksha mantra — was to ease the transition from the world of mortals. That tattoo is not the only one Kusale has. He also has one of the Arjuna, from the Mahabharata, on his arm. But while Arjuna might be synonymous with marksmanship in Indian sports, it’s the ink on Kusale’s back that really symbolises what the 25-year-old has achieved.
He has elevated his status in the firmament of Indian sport after winning an Olympic bronze in the 50m men’s three position at the Olympic shooting centre in Chateauroux on Thursday. His medal is the third for India at the 2024 Olympics and the first ever in the 50m three position. It’s also the first individual one for an athlete from Maharashtra since KD Jadhav’s wrestling bronze from the 1952 Helsinki Games.
A year ago, when Kusale got the verse tattoo, he says he needed the spiritual support at what he felt was a crucial juncture in his life. Kusale had always been a promising shooter but at 29, he was still struggling to win that one medal that would establish him as a top shooter. He had finished fourth in two of the most important events of his career: the 2022 World Championships and the Asian Games. The second one was especially heartbreaking. During the qualifying round, he set an Asian record. In the final, he was in a comfortable lead before he shot a 7.6 and missed out on a podium finish.
‘Bharat’ engraved in gold letters on the barrel of Swapnil Kusale’s gun used during the men’s 50m rifle 3 positions final at Paris 2024 Olympics. | Photo Credit: RITU RAJ KONWAR/THE HINDU
Modest means
Kusale, the son of a schoolteacher from the Kambalwadi village near Kolhapur, was given a rifle at the age of 14 as part of Maharashtra’s Kreeda Probodhini programme, the state’s sports promotion initiative.
His father also believed in him. Despite being a village schoolteacher with meagre means, he bought Kusale his first air rifle with a loan. The interest rate was very high, and he was paying back the loan until four years ago.
But Kusale felt he was not living up to their expectations. In 2018, after he failed to make the Indian squad for the Asian Games, he got inked for the first time — the words ‘I promise’ on his right forearm.
“I did that because I felt I wasn’t justifying my talent. I had a belief in what my goals had to be, and I couldn’t be casual or lazy. I had to make that promise to myself,” he says.
Despite his apprehensions, Kusale’s coaches — personal coach Deepali Deshpande, whom he calls his second mother — continued to believe in him. Others saw that he was special as well.
Excellent temperament
According to Joydeep Karmakar, a fourth-place finisher at the 2012 Olympics who was coach of the national team between 2021 and 2022, Kusale had all the makings of a top shooter. “He is the closest in temperament I’ve seen to Gagan Narang. In terms of aggressiveness, he is like a 20-tonne truck when he finds his momentum. He will keep going for his shots. When he’s in flow, he’s just impossible to stop,” Karmakar had told Sportstar a day before the final.
But all that aggressiveness had its downsides as well. “Just like you can’t control a truck when it’s going at that speed, it’s hard for Swapnil to control himself when things start going wrong. He’s started to become more mature, though. He knows how to reign himself in now,” Karmakar would say.
The version of Kusale who took the firing lane on Thursday was exactly the one that Karmakar had hoped would show up. He was aggressive when he needed to be and restrained when he had to be, putting together a performance that belied the fact that he was competing in his maiden Olympic Games.
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There’s no doubt Kusale was nervous. He started with a 9.6 in his first shot in the kneeling position of the final (shooters in the event take 15 shots in the kneeling position, then another 15 in the prone position, before transitioning to the standing position). The first two shooters are eliminated following the first two series of 10 shots in the standing position, and the next lowest-ranked shooter is eliminated with every shot thereafter.
The occasion seemed to be getting the better of Kusale, but he pulled himself together to stay in the contest.
At the end of the first two stages, though, Kusale didn’t look like he was going to make it to the medal bracket. He was in fifth place — 0.9 behind fourth place and a whole point away from the medals — in a sport where results are decided in decimals.
Kusale said he was not trying to pay attention to the gap. “I just focussed on my breathing. I wanted to make my teammates happy. I focussed on my body to calm myself,” he’d say after the match.
Red-letter day
Although Kusale was initially behind, he excelled in the standing position, which is the most challenging as shooters have the least stability when aiming at a target 50 meters away. Needing to make up the ground, he remained aggressive. Despite a poor start with a 9.5 in his first shot, he followed it up with four shots in the 10 ring to maintain his position. In the second series of five shots, his score of 9.1 was balanced out by another four in the 10 ring.
If Kusale managed to keep his nerves, those around him lost theirs. 2023 World silver medallist and European champion Jiri Privratsky of the Czech Republic, who was in fourth place, and the 2022 World Championships gold medallist, Jon Herman Hegg of Norway, who was in the lead at the start of the standing series, both shot five shots in the 9 ring to vault Kusale into the bronze medal place. The Indian would never leave it. He opened a 2.2-point gap that Privratsky was not able to bridge.
Kusale even had a chance to finish second, but ultimately conceded the place to Ukraine’s Serhiy Kulish. Silver might have eluded him, but bronze isn’t too bad as the big smile on the Indian’s face, as he stood on the podium, would suggest.
The grin got wider as he posed for pictures later.
Kusale would say later that he’d not achieved all he wanted to. “There is still a promise that I have left to fulfil,” he says.
But that’s for another day.
On Thursday, Kusale had a mantra on his skin and the word Bharat on his gun. And now with the Indian flag on his back, he looked the part as India’s newest sporting hero.
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