For Sarabjot Singh, the moment hasn’t really sunk in yet. He also has no idea how his life is about to change. For now, his mind is still in the Olympic shooting Centre in the provincial French town of Chateauroux, some 300km from Paris and a world away from his usual life in India.
He’s not sure if his friend ‘Poppy’ — the one who loves to modify cars — will come to pick him up at the airport. Most of Sarabjot’s friends are car crazy like himself. Unlike so many athletes competing here, he never even changed his phone’s wallpaper to align with his Olympic goals. The picture isn’t of the rings or a Paris medal, but only that of his dream car — a BMW M2.
Sarabjot has not always had pleasant memories from here. A year ago, he’d remember it for not even making it here — failing even to be a part of the Indian team that had come to train exactly a year ago as part of the Olympic preparatory camp.
He had failed to make the team after dealing with a problem typical of overzealous young athletes — injuries caused by training overload. “I had competed at the Bhopal World Cup and won a gold. Then when I woke up after it, I found I couldn’t move my shooting arm,” he recalled.
It took months of therapy to treat the ailment. “I couldn’t even lift a pistol. When I started shooting again, I would make five shots and then have to ice my arm before continuing,” he revealed, calling them the “hardest days of his life.”
For many in his village of Dhindsa, around 40 kms from Ambala in Haryana, the goal was different — fly out of the country and make it big. “My grandparents, uncles and aunts are abroad. Even my younger brother is studying in Canada,” he said.
Sarabjot, though, never wanted to leave. “I always wanted to stay and do something for the country.”
That “something” was always going to be shooting, a sport he took up as a 14-year-old. His father, Jatinder Singh, a farmer, took loans to buy a pistol. Training wasn’t easy as the academy run by former shooter-turned-coach Abhishek Rana was a 40-minute journey.
Sarabjot remembered those days. “For the first four years, I didn’t enjoy it. It became easier when my father bought a car and I could drive for training.”
Even when the results started to come in, things didn’t change immediately as Rana wanted him to maintain the hunger. That has been sated, if only partially, at Chateauroux. “This is just the start. I’ll do better at Los Angeles 2028,” he signed off.
