It was early 2023 and Chaudhary was trying to return to the national team. Three years earlier, in February 2020 just days before the world would be locked down, the then 18-year-old had offered the same ‘I look, aim and shoot’ explanation when he was asked to describe his genius.

That afternoon, standing under the crisp spring sun on the lawns of the Constitution Club in the heart of the Capital, Chaudhary was basking in the afterglow of a scarcely believable year that saw him catapulted into the rare status of a sure-shot medal winner at Tokyo Olympics.

Saurabh Chaudhary’s run en route to the 2018 Youth Olympic title was next level! 💯@OfficialNRAI | @SChaudhary2002 pic.twitter.com/LEUhEGReyT

— Olympic Khel (@OlympicKhel) March 28, 2023

A lot had changed in the intervening years. Yet, in Chaudhary’s words, nothing had.

The pandemic may have turned the world upside down. An Olympics of historic firsts and heartbreaks may have come and gone, leaving the shooters more bruised than any other Indian athletes. But Chaudhary, it appeared, emerged on the other side as the same, unchanged person – shy and inscrutable.

There was one big difference, which wasn’t so apparent a year ago as it is today: the reports of the demise of his form were not greatly exaggerated.

Last year, Chaudhary did not make the cut for the World Championships and the Asian Games. He finished 203rd at the National Championships with a score of 569 and shot a score of 557 – lowest among the 56 shooters in the 10m air pistol ranked by the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) in December – at the National Games. In the NRAI’s provisional 10m air pistol rankings released last month, Chaudhary is placed 35th on the list of 56 shooters.

Scroll a little up and the name of another enigma – shy and inscrutable like Chaudhary – who suffered a similar, dramatic slump in form – in the Rio to Tokyo cycle – stands out. Number 28: Jitu Rai.

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Amidst the celebrations over the record quota places earned for the Paris Olympics earlier this week, the tales of these two shooters offer caution.

One was born in the impoverished hilly district of Nepal, Sankhuwasabha. The other grew up in the badlands of Western UP. One had to leave his home, migrate to India, apply for citizenship and join the Army to become a sport shooter. The other didn’t have to navigate any of this; the route was simpler – he constructed a makeshift shooting range in his backyard. One had to suffer a spate of rejections in the initial years before making it big. Everything the other touched from the get-go turned into gold.

The diverse paths that Jitu Rai and Saurabh Chaudhary traversed eventually took them to dizzying heights.

Between 2013 and 2016, Rai won a gold medal at the World Cup, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games along with a silver medal at the World Championship. Chaudhary did even better between 2018 and 2021 – he won nearly every title that was on offer leading up to the Olympics. And in doing so, he shot scores that no Indian shooter had recorded before. Even Rai was in awe of the prodigy with a Bradmanesque average.

Their contrasting journeys have converged at unprecedented crossroads.

Rai lost his place in the Indian team – to Chaudhary, incidentally – long ago. And now Chaudhary, once seen as an heir to the moniker ‘Gold Finger’ that pistol great Samresh Jung was bestowed with, has been pushed out of the team. None, including Jaspal Rana, could nail down the pistol medal at the Olympics and Vijay Kumar remains the lone winner in rapid fire, with air pistol failures being the most curious Games after Games.

The two Paris Olympics quota winners, Sarabjot Singh and Varun Tomar (Chaudhary’s cousin) have swiftly filled the void and continued to ensure India’s presence in the pistol events remains firm in international events.

But the question continues to haunt: Why, in consecutive Olympic cycles, have India’s best air pistol shooters suffered an irreversible loss of form?

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There are no straightforward answers but some of the best brains in Indian shooting have come up with theories.

Chaudhary and Rai shared the same ‘look, aim, shoot’ mantra. There were times when they went about their thing so nonchalantly that the duo gave an impression that they themselves weren’t sure how they shot such high scores consistently. But when things fall apart, the simplicity can also be a bane.

Abhinav Bindra, who recovered from a setback at the Athens Olympics to win the gold medal in Beijing, says: “Sometimes, there is a lack of self-awareness. Simple execution, without having much self-awareness of what’s happening around them, within them… things are just falling into place. That’s a great situation to be in. The challenge there is when things do break down, you don’t have a method to go back to. It’s about starting all over again. That’s been the case to a degree with these athletes.”

Voices in the NRAI believe the disappointment of not winning a medal at the Olympics impacted Chaudhary and Rai so deeply that they never could recover completely. Yet, it also remains a fact that both of them reached the final – Chaudhary, in fact, was the only Indian shooter to reach a shooting final at the Tokyo Games.

The young prodigy was one of the benefactors of the gun laws getting liberalised and the access to air pistols getting easier as a consequence. It allowed him to shoot at home without any professional help or supervision. It’s all rosy until a certain point but when there’s a dip in form – as he experienced – the self-taught ways can be an impediment.

More so in pistol shooting, says London Olympics silver medallist Vijay Kumar because of the finer nuances involved. “Pistol is a more difficult weapon than a rifle to master because it’s one-hand-held only. Both, the trigger mechanism and balance in aiming and holding the weapon are in one hand. Controlling it is tougher,” he says.

Vijay adds: “You need to understand your weapon so well that you can deal with a malfunction within seconds of realising it. Otherwise, it’s just an excuse for a poor show. The ability to control the pressure at the Olympics is the single-biggest quality besides good technique. You might have given 100 domestic trials and won World Cups, but how well you accept the pressure of the Olympics and not let past success disturb you, will decide if you get a medal.”

Bindra did not comment specifically in the case of these two shooters, saying he wasn’t aware of their process, but noted the ‘importance of a strong foundation.’

“When you don’t have a strong foundation, things can break down completely,” Bindra says. “You can have success with errors in technique but you can still go out and win. When you are in a purple patch, nothing can stop you. With every competition, the technique falls apart and one fine day, it completely falls apart.”

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The way Bindra explains, one needs to think of shooters like cars. With every mile run, the wear and tear gets worse. And unless it goes back to the garage, a complete breakdown isn’t far away.

In shooting, Bindra says, the technique erodes with every tournament. “When you are in a competition, your hands are shaking and the heart rate will be up – that’s unavoidable. So, your technical execution is going to break down as you are going to find a way to somehow get the shot out and perform well. And so, after every competition, your technique is falling apart to a degree,” he says.

The shooting equivalent of returning to the garage is to go back to the range, ‘clean up’ the technique by repeating basic things over and over again rightly. “Focus on your foundation and plug whichever gap has to be plugged before they become a habit. You have to deconstruct to reconstruct,” he says.

This means that in a packed season where an elite shooter has to compete in international tournaments, selection trials to get into the national team and national championships, there could be very little time to find a month or two to ‘return to basics’.

More so in an ultra-competitive landscape of Indian shooting, where staying away from competition could mean someone else taking your spot. So, it might be tempting for a shooter to not mend an unbroken bridge but it’s also why, Bindra says, a shooter needs to have a coach in his corner whom he can trust.

Chaudhary did even better between 2018 and 2021 – he won nearly every title that was on offer leading up to the Olympics.

“Smart athletes won’t go back to the basics when they hit poor form. They’d do that trying to prevent bad form. That needs self-awareness. Not all athletes have the self-awareness to do these things. Hence the role of coaches is of absolute importance,” Bindra says.

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The relationship with coaches extends beyond the ‘courage’ to tinker with technique even while at the top.

“Only the shooters can accurately say what went wrong at the Olympics. We can only guess,” Vijay says. “But the athlete needs to work in a better way. I followed the tasks given by my coach. I trusted him and we had a good understanding. You need to have faith that the coach is only trying to help you.”

In Rai’s case, a four-member panel constituted by the NRAI to investigate the debacle at the Rio Olympics blamed coach Pavel Smirnov for his failure to win a medal.

Chaudhary’s post-Tokyo slump has coincided with his souring relationship with childhood coach Amit Sheoran. It was at Sheoran’s basic facility in Baghpat that Chaudhary learned shooting and he was also hailed as a key figure in the shooter’s rapid rise. Soon after the Olympics, the duo had a falling out and Chaudhary trained by himself at his home.

It is learnt that he was coaxed by his well-wishers to return to the National Centre of Excellence at the Karni Singh Range in Delhi, where he resumed training in a professional set-up.

Between 2013 and 2016, Rai won a gold medal at the World Cup, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games along with a silver medal at the World Championship.

Whether it’s the change of scene or something else, only Chaudhary can tell, but at the last selection trials in December, he looked like his own self – shooting a world-class score of 586 in qualifying round for the first time since Tokyo. He still has a long way to go to get back in contention for the Paris Games but his performance has reignited possibilities.

These are the little rays of hope one clings to. But in the end, it’s about putting on the blinkers and not getting swayed away by the hype that follows the medal-winning performances in events leading up to the Olympics, Vijay says.

“I was well aware that CWG, Asian performances and medals counted for nothing. They don’t make any difference. Olympics are Olympics. (That’s) where the best of the best turn up.”

In that is a lesson for the Paris-bound, gun-toting army of Indian shooters.