Chateauroux: Manu Bhaker and Sarabjot Singh are the same age. Yet the former was moving around carrying the look of a pro, minutes after they had won the 10m air pistol mixed bronze medal. Manu knew exactly what to do and in what order before, during and after the medal ceremony: reach out to people in the crowd for an India flag, look out for the shutterbugs and their ever-changing angles, flash a smile the moment they go ‘click’.

In all this, Sarabjot stood there a bit dazed. He didn’t know which way to go at times, and in what order to proceed along the formalities that immediately follow the action. He wrapped the flag upside down at first for a few seconds. He kept glancing at the medals that passed by him and Manu over to the silver and gold medallists.

This was a soft-spoken first-time Olympian, alongside an eloquent second-timer, both 22. Together, they stirred up a third-place finish with a show that began with a blemish but ended with a bang. And a bronze.

In a sport of fine margins and an event of great uncertainty, Manu and Sarabjot delivered a rather dominant show against Korea’s Lee Won-ho and Oh Ye-jin in the 10m air pistol mixed bronze medal match. The 16-10 scoreline would’ve been more yawning had the Koreans not made a late fightback.

On the Indian side, it was clear on whose pistol it rested. That two-time Olympian is now a two-time medallist.

Manu and Sarabjot faced contrasting individual fortunes in Chateauroux leading up to the mixed gig. Sarabjot missed qualifying for the final by a whisker; Manu entered and exited it with a medal.

The two teamed up for the mixed qualification on Monday and missed out on an assured and greater medal by one point. They knew they were still in it, though, and that was the last time they spoke before Tuesday’s final.

“We spoke a bit after yesterday’s qualification, that you give your best and so will I. Baaki dekhi jayegi (rest we’ll see),” Manu, typically straight talking, said.

“We don’t talk a lot,” Sarabjot, who admitted he was lost for words on the day, said. “We just focus on our technique.”

Sarabjot’s first shot was way off that technical and mental calm he sought to kick off the medal bid. An 8.6 start can spell doom, but with Manu dazzling by his side, they dashed away.

After losing the first round – a team gets two points per round, with the first to 16 points being the winner – India won four on the bounce. Manu was on song, shooting 10.7, 10.4, 10.7 and 10.5. Sarabjot too quickly gathered himself with 10.5, 10.4 and 10.0. Both Koreans took turns to shoot average 9s, and the body language of Oh, the women’s individual gold medallist, reeked frustration.

Up and away at 10-4, India met an unexpected speedbreaker. Without a single 9 off her first seven shots, Manu, who took longer than usual to pull the trigger on the eighth shot, let out an 8.3. The habitual glance back to her personal coach Jaspal Rana seated in the stands ensued.

And so did normalcy. Having dropped that round, India picked up the next two after both fired 10s in their respective two shots. A round away from victory, both fluffed 9s. Manu did so again two shots later but when Sarabjot got a 10.2, the medal was theirs.

A strong start by the two-timer was capped off by a steady finish by the debutant – both Khelo India athletes. Rankled a bit under pressure in the individual qualification round, Sarabjot did not break a second time. He followed the same routine for the big day: slept at 9:30pm, woke up at 5:30am, prepared the way he always does for any match.

“Waise main ek baat batau, mujhe pressure nahi tha kuch (I didn’t feel any pressure coming into the final),” Sarabjot said when asked about tackling pressure. “Yes, when I came on the lane, kaafi zyada hype create ho gayi thi (there was a lot of hype around).”

It matched the end result they hoped, which was Sarabjot finally doing what he’d set out to do at these Games and Manu doubling her count. Once the job was done, the two, who only shook hands in celebration and hardly spoke in the moments thereafter, came back to watch the gold medal match and were chatting away.

Speaking to reporters together, Sarabjot let out a rare emotional leak of laughter when a question was directed towards Manu. It was about whether this medal takes all the pressure off going for her third and final event – the women’s 25m pistol. Manu too chuckled, saying, “Again, I will try my absolute best. That is what I can do. I know that I have worked really hard even to be here with this medal.”

For now, the second remains the talk of the (Indian) town at the Games. Even travelling all the way from Chateauroux to Paris, where a majority of the country’s contingent is based. “Before we came for our match, we saw that she won the bronze again. And we were like, ‘it’s our time; nobody can stop us’,” shuttler Satwiksairaj Rankireddy said after topping the men’s doubles group with Chirag Shetty. “Kudos to her. To win two medals, not only one, is not easy.”

Read Also: Dear Diary: How Sarabjot found his poise again