New Delhi/Pune: Each time Swapnil Kusale put his finger on the trigger, a golden ring displaying the Olympic rings, was flashed prominently. Before the selection trials at home, his friend Akshay Ashtraputre designed two Olympic rings -- one for Swapnil and one for himself.

The two go back a long way to when Swapnil studied at Krida Prabodhini centre in Pune -- a school sports programme of the Maharashtra government - that played helped develop his shooting skills. And the Olympic dream was a shared one.

Hailing from a small village of Kambalwadi in the Kolhapur district was new to the city life and used to stay with Akshay who was himself a pistol shooter. That grew into a lifelong friendship for Swapnil who still remains an introverted village boy at heart.

The shooting journey began in school. Swapnil studied in Kolhapur until the 7th standard and to pursue his sports dream, his father Suresh Kusale — a school principal — enrolled him in Bhonsala Military School in Nashik.

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“Since childhood, he was fond of rifle shooting, and he developed a passion for the sport when he saw Abhinav Bindra win a gold medal at the Olympics. For better coaching, we enrolled him in the state government’s primary sports programme — Krida Prabodhini,” said Suresh.

The 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune was a turning point for young Swapnil. He took up shooting among several other sports in the school. By 2013 he found his way into the junior national camp. He started with air rifle but was soon drawn towards the firearm event — rifle three positions which uses .22 calibre bullets to shoot the target at a distance of 50 meters. “We used to find him in the 50m range. He liked the sound of bullet firing,” recalls his coach Deepali Deshpande.

Soon he started focusing on prone and then all 50m three positions since 2014.

The sports programme in school had laid a good physical foundation for him to pick up the gruelling discipline where a shooter has to spend long hours and shoot from three different positions — kneeling, prone and standing.

He immediately made a mark at the junior level becoming Asian junior champion the next year. At the Senior National Championships in 2015, he was rubbing shoulders with stalwarts like Gagan Narang and Chain Singh.

Kusale has been making steady progress putting in years of hard work and a tough training regimen in the gruelling discipline. Before the Tokyo Olympics, he was in fine form and in contention for a berth.

Though he missed the chance, it helped him build his game and emerge stronger in these three years. Outside of shooting, he got into the Railways and has been working at Pune railway division as a Travelling Ticket Examiner (TTE). But shooting takes most of his time.

On Thursday, Kolhapur erupted in celebrations as he won the bronze medal. Kambalwadi joined Swapnil’s family and friends to watch his final. As he secured the bronze medal, emotions ran high, and the village celebrated by distributing sweets.

“We are extremely happy today and on top of the world as our son has won a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics. It is his determination and 12 years of hard work that have paid off today,” said his mother, Anita Kusale, who is also the village Sarpanch.

Having missed medals at the 2022 World Championships and Asian Games, Kusale had put a lot of work in the standing position — which had seen him hit two poor shots that pushed him to 4th place in the big events. He also worked on his mental conditioning with sports psychologist Vaibhav Agashe.

“After the Asian Games he was heartbroken,” says Deshpande. “He was so close to winning a medal but one bad shot (41st shot) dashed everything.” At the 2022 Worlds also he hit a similar bad shot in the same position. In the final on Thursday, he was patient and overcame that tense period with confidence — a 10.5 in his 41st shot put him in the medal position.

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