Paris: “It’s no stopping for me.”

This was Manu Bhaker after winning a couple of medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Athletes take a pause after competing in an Olympics. They touch cloud nine after winning one medal. We wouldn’t be able to fathom the startling sense of pocketing two within days of each other because no one in Indian sport knew the feeling of it, until Manu did this week.

Yet, she didn’t want to stop.

Sure enough, two days after grabbing an unmapped second medal, she came back to stake her claim for a third and explore further uncharted territory.

The two-time Olympian turned two-time medallist of this week on Friday booked her place in a third final of these Games, finishing second in the women’s 25m pistol qualification with a score of 590/600 that was only bettered by Hungarian Veronika Major’s 592, which equalled the Olympic qualifying record.

Esha Singh, the other Indian in the fray, finished 18th with a score of 581.

Manu, the first in independent India to have two medals from the same Olympics with her bronze in the 10m air pistol individual and mixed events, is already attached to history. On Saturday, the 22-year-old will take aim to detach her Paris Olympics campaign from anything else in the annals of India’s Olympic tales. First Indian woman shooter to win an Olympic medal. Check. Two Olympic medals in the same Games. Check.

Yet, she didn’t want to stop.

To put into context Manu’s magic, Indian shooters had advanced to three finals at the 2012 London Olympics. Four years later in Rio (where, like London, there were no team events), India had two finalists. At the Tokyo Games three years ago, there was one. And it wasn’t Manu, who featured in three events at Tokyo too.

What’s been remarkable about Manu’s days in the ranges of Chateauroux, from the morning of Saturday until the afternoon of Friday, is the consistent quality of shooting she has brought along across her three events.

Third in the 10m air pistol qualification with a score of 580. Third in the 10m air pistol final with 221.7. Third in the 10m air pistol mixed team event with a combined score of 580 alongside Sarabjot Singh. Terrific in the 10m air pistol mixed bronze medal match shooting high 10s in all but three shots. Third after the precision stage of the 25m qualification scoring 294. Second after the rapid stage shooting 296.

All along, she seldom dipped from the position she needed to be in – top eight in the qualifications, top three in the finals – to get to where she wanted to be.

Her lowest sequence on Friday came in the first series of precision, in which she shot three 9s for 97. She picked up from there, and how. The second series (98) had just a couple of 9s, and the third (99) had nine straight 10s. Manu began the three-stage rapid series with a perfect 100 that bumped her up to second, where she stayed despite the lone 8 of her qualification in the second series and two consecutive 9s in the third and last.

If athletes being in their zone had a face and an instance, Manu at the 2024 Paris Olympics would be right up there.

And she’s managed to stay in it even after the several forms of distraction that tend to follow a medal. After the first, she spent all afternoon and evening attending to the media and the calls from dignitaries from back in India. She was back the next day for the mixed qualification, and the next for the medal. Rinse and repeat, talks and protocols. This time amid the heightened outdoor heat.

Unlike in the mixed, the 25m event came after a two-day gap and there, with more time to reflect and revisit her moments of history, the challenge was to remain in the zone. Never once appearing out of rhythm back afresh as a twin medallist, Manu was back to doing Manu things at these Games.

Which, learning lessons from the debacle of Tokyo three years ago, is to just stick to routines and steer clear of thinking about medals. Every day — no matter medal, qualification or medal — in Chateauroux began at 5.30am for her, a deadline set by her coach Jaspal Rana to get out of bed. Yoga, breakfast, hit the range and shoot. The routine was faultlessly followed.

“She sometimes follows routines better than me, and I used to think I’m good at that,” Rana said. In Tokyo, routines had made way for a pressure-filled bubble.

Every evening after her day’s work, the walk between the student and the coach — something they follow even otherwise to talk anything that Manu wishes to — from the range to the Village would follow. That was the only time Manu and Rana, staying put in an accommodation in the city about 20 minutes away from the Village, would have a chance to talk at length. On the evening of her second medal, there may have been a quiet celebration through that walk, of Manu going places no one had ever been to.

Yet, she didn’t want to stop.

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