Paris Olympics: Manu leaves range with head high, and a soaring brand value

‘’Please show me the same love even after the third event. Don’t be angry if can’t add another one’’ – this was a smiling Manu Bhaker a few days earlier soon after she claimed her second bronze medal in Paris Olympics. Well, a hat-trick of medals eluded her as she finished fourth in 25 metres air pistol final on Saturday, 2 August, but it’s unlikely that the legion of her newly acquired fans will mind.  

A bronze in the women’s 10 m air pistol; a second one in the company of Sarabjot Singh in the mixed team event of 10m air pistol and finally a fourth place after staying in second place after the first stage. With the nightmares of Tokyo banished and the fierce trolls turning into bouquets, the 22-year-old petite Manu has certainly been the most influential Indian athlete in Paris after the first week.

There is no doubt that the likes of a Saina Nehwal (first Olympic medal in badminton for India in London 2012), double medallist P.V. Sindhu, legendary boxer M.C. Mary Kom and wrestler Sakshi Malik had blazed a trail for Indian women in Olympics, but Manu’s journey to limelight from being down in the dumps three years back comes with possibly all the ingredients of a Bollywood biopic. For someone who has seen both sides of the coin at such an early age, the girl from Jhajjar in Haryana should be in no hurry for such idolatry through.

The inevitable perks of being a young and groundbreaking athlete – with her being the first woman shooter from India to finish on the Olympics podium – have started flowing in though. There are media reports that Manu’s portfolio managers are already having a field day with enquiries for endorsements along with the buzz that her asking fee has already shot up six to seven times from Rs 20 lakhs approximately per client before Paris.

‘’We have got 40-odd enquiries in just the last 2-3 days. We are focusing right now on the long-term association deals and we have closed a couple of endorsements,’’ Neerav Tomar, CEO and MD of IOS Sports & Entertainment told TOI recently. Her managers have also moved in swiftly to take legal action against business entities who have used her images to congratulate her on her Paris bow – a justified step as it infringes her image rights.

While there is no role of the athlete in taking such business decisions, experience tells us being commercially astute – especially for a non-cricket sports star - is something which doesn’t go down well in the Indian society. Try taking such a liberty with star cricketers like Virat Kohli or Jasprit Bumrah and find it.   

Back to the National Shooting Center in Chateauroux on Saturday morning, it was an agonising experience for Manu. Despite occupying the top three places for most of the final, a poor series towards the closing stages saw her drop to fourth place after a shoot-off with Veronika Major of Hungary.

Veronika settled for the bronze medal while Jiin Yang of the Republic of Korea took the gold medal after beating France’s Camille Jedrzejewski in a shoot-off.

Manu was the only athlete in the 21-member Indian shooting team to participate in multiple individual events and achieved something which had been a rarity in the annals of Indian sport. Only Sindhu, wrestler Sushil Kumar and athlete Norman Pritchard (British India) have two individual Olympic medals each and now Manu is the fourth one.

Besides Manu and Sarabjot, Swapnil Kusale won a bronze medal in men’s 50m rifle three positions.

Her fourth-place finish in the women’s 25m pistol final was also the second so-near-yet-so-far case for India in the shooting range after Arjun Babuta also suffered the same fate in the men’s 10m air rifle final. Interestingly, India’s first-ever Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra and former national coach Joydeep Karmakar also suffered fourth place heartbreaks in Rio and London, respectively.