Chateauroux: At times, Sarabjot Singh struggles to express his thoughts but a practice he strictly follows is jotting down thoughts in a diary. He does it daily before going to bed at 9:30pm, writing what he did well on the day and what he could do better.

Thus, when the pistol shooter was a shattered man after missing out on qualifying for the individual 10m men’s air pistol final by the barest of margins (one less inner 10), his personal coach Abhishek Rana, here as a non-accredited coach, gave him one instruction: refer to that diary.

“That diary only has positive thoughts, and maintaining it daily helps him a lot,” Rana said.

Sarabjot needed just that for his mixed event and the final medal chance. “I kept speaking to the coach and thinking where I was left a little behind in that match and what could I do to better that,” he said.

He did better that, earning from his first Olympics something he had targeted to achieve the moment he qualified for it through the selection trials. “This medal, kaafi maayna rakhta hai mere life (it means a lot to me). It makes me extremely happy, although I’m not able to express those feelings and thoughts right now,” he said.

But both him and his coach see room for improvement, looking back at these Olympics as well as moving forward. “Next time, I will do even better than this,” Sarabjot said.

Rana, who had to take a daily guest pass to be able to just watch him from the stands, said Sarabjot not having training time with him in Chateauroux did not help. “I couldn’t meet him before the match or in training. Those 5-6 days went a bit waste,” Rana said. “I couldn’t do the things that we should have ideally done in the lead up to his matches. He could’ve shot even better here.”

Bus rides to car trips

Still, Rana is happy that the struggles of the boy he knew and coached since 2016 has paid off. Joining his academy in Ambala, Haryana, Sarabjot would travel one hour daily by bus back and forth from his village Dheen. His breakfast was packed by his mother and his lunch was a home-cooked meal from Rana’s house.

Sarabjot admitted to getting bored of those long bus rides for a couple of years in between, until he got a friend to tag along. And, until he purchased a car in 2021 and was finally allowed to drive it.

A lover of fast cars, Sarabjot has a long list of dream buys. An Olympic medal gift would be? “That I can’t discuss,” he smiled.

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