From Siachen to Paris 2024: Unwilling shooter Sandeep realises Olympic dream through ‘picture-perfect’ journey

Competing in the final of the shooting Olympic Selection trials at the Madhya Pradesh Shooting range in Bhopal on Saturday, Sandeep Singh faced an unusual predicament.

Shooting might be a sport of handling pressure and, with five competitors vying for two spots in the Indian Olympic team, there had been plenty of it in the men’s 10m air rifle category.

For Sandeep, the issue was not too much pressure but too little.

With qualification scores of 634.4, 632.6 and 631.6 in the first three selection trials, the 28-year-old had all but assured himself of the highest best-of-three average scores that would determine the selection into the Indian team.

That lack of pressure certainly affected his performance – he shot a modest 628.3. Despite that, his three best scores over the past few weeks were more than enough to place him first.

He edged Olympic quota winner Arjun Babuta and World champion Rudranksh Patil – both of whom started with an additional point – to secure his spot at the Paris 2024 Games.

Sandeep said he was not thinking about the Olympics (while shooting) at all. “In my mind, I had nothing to lose and hence, there was no pressure. I just wanted to do my thing and do it well. I didn’t care about anyone else. But I think I became a bit too relaxed. You need a little bit of pressure. Too little is not very good too,” he says.

The lack of pressure seems a constant for Sandeep. The sport, a bit too easy.

He almost always rushes through his competitions, back in his seat, pulling off his shooting jacket and trousers while others barely into their penultimate series.

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For a soldier who has served at the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, an air-conditioned indoor shooting range, even with Olympics quota on the line, must certainly feel a battle with far less at stake.

Naib Subedar Sandeep Sandeep started competing for India at the international level late last year and was in red-hot form with a score of 633.4 in his last competition – at the Asian Championships earlier this year.

FROM A CROSS-COUNTRY ATHLETE TO A SHOOTER

Growing up in Behbal Khurd village near Punjab’s Faridkot, Sandeep became a cross-country athlete primarily because it would help him in the army recruitment test.

“My father, Baljinder Singh, is a mazdoor. I didn’t even know that there was a sport like shooting. In our village, there was no concept of sports. The only thing that mattered was joining the fauz (army). I was a very good runner and came first in the state cross-country championships,” Sandeep says.

But his passion for running came at the cost of his own safety. “The hardest thing I’ve done before I got picked by the army was cross-country training. I’d go running at 3 a.m. and run eight kilometres at a time,” he explains. “It was always dangerous to run at that hour because there would be a lot of drug addicts on the streets around that time. Near our village, there were a lot of robberies because of that. Luckily, nothing happened to me.”

Sandeep’s speed on the track helped him join the army, in the Sikh Light Infantry as a sipahi (sepoy) in 2014. His career as an athlete, however, ended soon after.

“I had to put my interest in athletics to one side. I did my basic training and then had to do the same drills as everyone else,” he says.

Two years after he joined, an air rifle was thrust into his hands, and he was told to try and become a rifle shooter. “No one asked me my opinion. Aate aate ghused diya shooting me. (They put me in shooting right away),” he shrugs.

“At that time, I was a young recruit, just 18. So, they thought I was young enough to pick up shooting. And I picked it up very easily. Within a few months, I won the state championships, and, in two years, I won a national bronze.”

“His best skill is his focus on his technique. Once he starts shooting, he doesn’t get distracted. He just seems to focus on what he has to do with his rifle,” Army coach Satendra Kumar quips.

For Sandeep, shooting has been more of an acquired taste.

“Shooting is a sport where you must be absolutely still. But I slowly started to appreciate it. I had to be mentally strong in shooting in a way that I was not as a runner. In the past, if I was angry, I just had to take it all out on the field. But here, I couldn’t do that. I had to be calm,” he says.

His patience and mental fortitude have been tested in the hardest ways possible. After a breakout start to his career, Sandeep made it to the Olympic reserve team ahead of the Tokyo Games.

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Then, unexpectedly in 2020, he failed a dope test – testing positive for a beta blocker along with a few other army athletes. Sandeep denies taking anything.

“I was so clueless that when I had to go for the hearing where the anti-doping body would determine the extent of my ban, I just went by myself. I didn’t even know I had to bring a lawyer,” he said. “Finally, one was provided to me. It was one of the hardest periods of my life. No one supported me. I couldn’t believe what had happened to me and I was depressed for a few months.”

Facing a ban from the sport, Sandeep was dismissed from the Army Marksmanship Unit in Mhow (Dr Ambedkar Nagar cantonment in Indore), where he trained, and was sent back to his unit – at Siachen, with the Sikh Light Infantry.

A SECOND CHANCE

Sandeep’s luck turned when a senior officer felt his skills were better used in the shooting range rather than the icy wastes of the Himalayas.

“I was sent back to train in Delhi. They must have felt I could be a good shooter because I had a national medal and the army had also sent me to a training competition in the Netherlands. At first, I wasn’t sure how I would be able to adjust since I had not shot for nearly two years after I failed my dope test,” he says.

He, however, had nothing to worry. In his first qualification round at the Air Force Shooting range in New Delhi, he shot 636. And he continued to shoot high scores, sometimes even reaching 639.

“I can only say that my break made me a better shooter. When I shot at the National Games last year, I won a bronze which gave me even more confidence,” he says. “Eventually, when I returned to the national side, I continued to score above 630. I still don’t know how my scores are so high even after I was away from training for so long.”

His scores have stayed high as he competed for the national team – for the first time – at the ISSF World Cups in Rio De Janeiro and Granada and the Asian Championships, where he scored a 633.4 in qualification, earlier this year.

Those results gave him the confidence that he could replicate his domestic performances overseas as well.

It also eased any nerves he might have felt before the selection trials.

“I’m not thinking I don’t belong here. There’s nothing in my mind that there are people next to me who are much more experienced or have world championship gold medals. I don’t worry about any of that,” he says.

“I don’t feel like I can’t sleep or can’t eat food. I’m a fun-loving guy. I’ll play BGMI (Battlegrounds Mobile India – a mobile game) with my friends after every match. I just think ‘jo hoga dekha jayega’. (Whatever happens, will happen).”

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Sandeep, however, is yet to tell his parents about his exploits. “They don’t know what the Olympics even are. They just know that I am in the fauj (army). Maybe, I’ll tell them in a few days when the selection committee names me in the team,” he says .

While Sandeep himself had very little idea about shooting or the Olympics until a few years back, he’s now looking forward to the opportunity.

“I think there was a lot more pressure at the selection trials than what I can expect at the Olympics. But I’ll still give it my best attempt,” he says.

“Where I train at the Army Marksmanship Unit in Mhow, there is a room where there are framed pictures of Army shooters who have competed in the Olympics. And there is one empty frame with the words ‘your name here’. I saw it when I came to AMU for the first time. Now I want my name there,” Sandeep adds.