Pistol Feat

It wasn't the best of scripts. That said, it had its fair share of twists and turns.

And the time the two-and-a-half-hour-long drama ended, tears of joy greeted the 11 Gorkha Regiment's 27-year-old junior commissioned officer's valiant attempt.

Having qualified for the final of the 50 metres air pistol event in seventh place with a score of 559 –– way below his best own standards –– Jitu Rai held his nerve to gift India its first gold medal in Incheon.

Local hero, world and Olympic champion Jin Jingoh kept the crowd guessing during the qualifiers. It was only in the final stages that the Indian emerged from the shadow of his co-support cast with a score of 186.2 to enthrall the jam-packed arena.

Born in Sankhuwasabha district of Nepal's Eastern Development Region, Rai has now won six medals in as many competitions at the world stage since June. In short, he has effectively established the fact that he is the hottest property in Indian shooting. Watch out for his exploits at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. The young marksman's consistency is his greatest virtue and he scored a perfect 10 on that front.

In the final round, Rai was in the hunt from the word go and stayed close to the initial leader, Nguyen Hoang Phuong of Vietnam. And when Rai finally took lead in the second-last shot (19th), Hoang Phuong cracked under pressure. Rai kept his cool and a simple 8.4 score was enough for him to clinch the gold medal.

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach was the first to stand up and applaud the armyman.

Fresh from his silver medal-winning in the world championships in Granada (Spain) last week, the Lucknow-based marksman also completed the grand Commonwealth-Asiad double. He became only the second Indian pistol shooter to clinch a gold medal at the Asian Games after Jaspal Rana and the fourth shooter overall after shotgun experts Randhir Singh in 1978 and Ronjan Sodhi in 2010.

"Dimaag thanda karne do (let me cool down first)," he said after the "toughest victory" of his career. "It was really tough because I have been on the road since June. There was tremendous pressure day in and day out.

Hopefully, I can relax now," he said.

Rai is right. After all, it's virtually impossible to maintain top form for three months. But he is not alone in this successful journey. He owes it to coach Pavel Smirnov and mental trainer Vaibhav Agashe, who have been helping him overcome fatigue.

Smirnov has been with Rai for almost six years. "I had taught him to shoot years ago. Now, my job is to talk to him, help him keep calm at the highest level," the Russian said.

Mental trainer Agashe was also elated. "There were some specific issues which were worked on after the Commonwealth Games. But it's not advisable to talk about all that as a professional," he said. However, he agreed to share a few things like how Rai was told to work on his muscle movement. "Muscle control is very important. You need to be able to stop all other movement and only move the finger. It requires very fine motor movement," added Agashe.

DID YOU KNOW?
By winning the gold, Rai completed a grand double as he had also won a gold in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow earlier this year
Rai thus became only the second Indian pistol shooter to clinch an Asian Games title after Jaspal Rana in 1994 and the fourth shooter overall after shotgun experts Randhir Singh in 1978 and Ronjan Sodhi in 2010
This was his sixth medal on the trot in international competitions in 2014, including the gold in Commonwealth Games and silver in the World Championship in the 50m range