National Games 2025: Arjun Babuta looks beyonds medals, seeks evolution as a shooter

When he stepped off the top of the podium after receiving his gold medal as part of the Punjab team in the 10m air rifle mixed team event at the National Games, Arjun Babuta was generous in his praise for his teammate Ojasvi Thakur.

‘ Saara kaam toh Ojasvi ne kiya,’ he said.

His partner quickly corrected him. “You did all the work in qualifying.”

She’s not wrong. If it wasn’t for Babuta, the pair from Punjab might not have qualified as one of the top two teams in the gold medal match. While Ojasvi scored 313.1 over the course of the three series in qualifying — placing her 10th among women in the qualification round— Babuta erased the deficit, top scoring with 318.6. Not a single series went under 106.

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In the mixed team event, each pair of shooters takes one shot each. The two scores are added and the team with higher scores get two points – with the first to 16 points winning the match. Babuta did his share of heavy lifting in the final against the Maharashtrian pair of Arya Borse and World champion Rudranksh Patil as well.

With the score 14-12 in favour of Punjab, Arya shot a 10.7 to Ojasvi’s 10.6. Babuta had to beat the former world champion Rudranksh Patil with his shot to avoid a tied score. He did just that, hitting a near perfect 10.8, just 0.1 short of the maximise score, to seal the gold.

It was a perfect end to the National Games in Dehradun for Babuta, but he didn’t make much of it.

“Honestly, I didn’t think of winning any medals here,” he said. “I’ve already told myself that I won’t be competing for medals this year. I will, of course, try to perform to the best of my ability on the lane. But my approach would be just to focus on the areas where I need to improve so that it can help me in the future during major competitions,” he said.

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Just as he found it easy to praise his partner in the mixed team final, he didn’t show any regret after what was a disappointing finish in the final of the men’s 10m air rifle event. Although Babuta had topped the qualification round with a score of 632.6 and even briefly led the final, he eventually finished fourth.

After the final, Babuta would laugh and joke with the winners at the Maharana Pratap Sports Center in Dehradun.

Déjà vu

While Babuta showed the ability to treat both victory and defeat at arms length, it wasn’t always the case.

His reaction in Dehradun was in complete contrast to one from seven months ago on the firing line in Chateauroux at the 2024 Olympic Games. Babuta had been in prime position to win a medal in the Olympic men’s 10m air rifle competition. A disastrous shot of 9.5 in what was his final shot of the competition denied him a podium finish. Grief couldn’t have been written any more visibly on his face. Normally calm and steely-eyed, he was distraught and left the competition hall weeping bitterly.

Once he gathered himself, he tried to make self-deprecating jokes about the situation.

“I don’t think I’ll have a more memorable fourth place finish than this one,” he said then.

He did a good job of masking his pain, but the emotions were raw.

“Initially, I was in denial, for sure. It was heart-wrenching for me. I completely lost it. There were days when I couldn’t sleep and there were days when I’d sleep through the day. I started forgetting things. It was so stressed out. It was easily one of the most traumatic moments in my life,” he recalled.

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The hurt was as sharp as ever when the 25-year-old returned to his first training session a month and a half after the Olympics.

“It was a different sort of experience. I went to the range about 1.5 months after I first started shooting. It was definitely very challenging because the wound was very fresh. When I picked up the rifle, I started crying. I put it back into its box and went home. I just couldn’t shoot that day,” he admitted.

Babuta’s coaches allowed space for his emotions and told him to come back whenever he could. His friends tried their best to help him too. They’d go on impulsive vacations to take his mind off the sport. His seniors spoke to him as well.

“I spoke to Shriyanka (Sadangi)  didi and Chain Singh and they tried their best, but at the end of the day, no one could help me because only I have been in the position I was. Only I could relate to it,” he said.

It took time, but Babuta has finally learned to accept what had happened.

“People would come and ask me what happened in the Olympic final but I had no answer. I still have no answer. It just happened because it was supposed to happen. I have stopped trying to understand it. I am just wasting time if I try and think about it because there is no explanation. I don’t know if there was a technical error or maybe some issue with the rifle. Because at the moment I shot that shot, I thought it was good. I thought I had hit a 10.8 or a 10.9. I released that shot with a lot of confidence. It happened because it was meant to happen.”

Babuta eventually found a reason to return to the range.

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“At the end of the day, I love shooting. Eventually, I started focusing on that and that helped me get back on the lane and pushed me to do better. I chose to focus on the fact that I loved shooting rather than the fact that I had a really bad memory on one day of my shooting journey. I wanted to shoot again not because I was angry at what had happened or because I had a point to prove. I did it because I love doing it. Shooting lets me be in my own space. I don’t have to communicate with anyone while shooting. I can be with my thoughts, I can be stable. And I can be balanced mentally.”

The centering his sport allows has helped Babuta make peace with that nightmare in Chateauroux.

“It’s now 7-8 months since the Olympics, so as time goes, it will get easier to deal with it. I think it is easier if I look at the incident as an athlete. As an athlete, I can’t say that anything is very different. But perhaps when I leave shooting, I can have a different perspective about it. As an athlete, I have to look at what happened as something that could have happened at any other competition.”

A conversation Babuta had with his coach Deepali Deshpande right after the Paris Games went a long way in comforting him.

“Deepali (Deshpande) ma’am took me out for lunch in Chateauroux and the first thing she said to me was that she was extremely proud of me. She said that peak Arjun Babuta is yet to come and that the fourth place finish in the Olympics wouldn’t define me.”

Making space to experiment

The hope and belief that there are bigger and brighter days ahead is his mantra not just for the National Games but also the rest of the year.

“I’ve made and will be making a lot of changes as a shooter. After the Olympics I felt that this was the right time to try this. This is the only year when I can do this. I am on a break of sorts in that I’m not looking just at winning tournaments but I am also working on a few things that I wanted to do for a long time, technically, physically and most of all mentally,” he explained.

The changes he has initiated are extensive. For starters, Babuta has started shooting a different event – the 50m three position.

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“I think this will help me in my 10m air rifle as well. I’ll develop muscle memory and also a better understanding of how my shooting muscles should work, and better reactions as well. I also will be making a few weapon changes and doing some ammunition testing. I’m also losing a lot of fat and building a lot more muscle strength and muscle mass. In one and a half months, I’ve lost five kilograms and I am hoping to drop another six.”

Babuta will also be travelling to Russia in order to train with Olympic medallists Sergei Kaminsky and Vladimir Maslennikov.

“I always felt that the Russians are really good shooters. I will be going in March and it will help me get a better idea how they approach the competition mentally. I wanted to see what their approach was like and what were the technical differences in the way they shoot compared to us.”

These changes come with their own challenges.

Indian shooting is an intensely competitive field now and any changes Babuta makes will almost surely have at the least a short-term impact on his results that will determine whether he makes national teams. This is a cost he is ready to pay.

“This (possible consequences) is fine. It would be a problem if I went in thinking I have to win every time. Now I just approach these competitions as if I am at a training match. My approach is different right now. So, it doesn’t bother me if I play 10 matches in a month or anything. I’m approaching all these matches as if they are training. I’m learning with every shot. I am fine with not making it to the national team. I am very secure with where I am right now, because I feel even if I am not in the team this year, I am secure. Because again I am working on something different, that will give me an edge next year and upcoming years. This year I’m just learning and learning with each and every match. Even if I don’t make it to the team, it’s all right. My goals aren’t just about winning medals right now but becoming the kind of shooter who can perform where it really matters, ” he signed off.