Paris Olympics 2024: Shooter Arjun Babuta flirts with history before agonising fourth-place finish in 10m Air Rifle final

It seems one of the most needlessly cruel bits of modern sports’ business to subject athletes to a question-and-answer session in minutes following a painful loss. It’s nothing but a postmortem on their own deceased hopes and dreams.

And yet, in the mixed zone following the final of the 10m air rifle event competition at the Paris Olympics, Arjun Babuta was asked, “What do you remember of the last time you finished fourth in a competition?”

As far as defeats go, nothing would seem as bitter to Babuta as the one he had to swallow at the shooting range at Chateauroux on Monday morning, when he flirted with the chance to make Indian sporting history before eventually finishing fourth.

Babuta wasn’t the only Indian to lose in the finals on the shooting range on Monday. Ramita Jindal – his colleague in the women’s 10m air rifle event had finished in seventh place just earlier that day. The 20-year-old Ramita came out with a big smile on her face though – vowing that the experience would do her good next time around.

But there’s a difference between finishing seventh and fourth. Any athlete will tell you which is worse. When you are seventh, you really were not in contention for a medal. A fourth-place finish is a reminder that you are just the first of the guys outside the podium. That’s where the 25-year-old from Fazilka had ended.

What could you honestly ask him that you didn’t know the answer to already? How do you feel right now? Take a guess.

One way of thinking was that Babuta had done immensely well to even get to a fourth-place finish. He’d not been the favourite at the start of the men’s 10m air rifle competition – this was a field that included China’s teenage phenom Sheng Lihao, who was already a gold medallist at the Games, world champion Victor Lindgren and Tokyo Olympic finalists Miran Maricic and Petr Gorsa and multiple-time World Cup gold medallist Danilo Sollazo. Babuta had made the final in seventh place out of eight competitors.

But it seemed it would be the 25-year-old Indian’s day. He had been following his process. He was in the zone, focusing on his breathing, his calmness, methodically aiming and triggering each shot. No emotion. Just pure shooting.

This was a routine set in stone. Babuta is considered one of the most intense Indian air rifle shooters. He is known to do whatever it takes to give himself an edge – changing his sleeping patterns in order to better adjust to shooting in foreign conditions, and training himself to shoot while hooked up to a stress detector in order to learn how to minimise his levels.

His penchant for relentlessness in training and spending hours upon hours in practice had even earned him a bulged spinal disc which had left him bedridden for months in his teens. Doctors had advised him to quit the sport but he took a second opinion and pressed on.

Now, on the grandest stage of them all – the Olympic Games – Babuta was going to make all those years of training and focus count. It was all falling in place. He had been in third position after 10 shots (out of a possible 26). He had been in second place – just 0.1 behind Lihao after 12 shots when the first finalist was eliminated. He shot a poor 9.9 in his 13th shot but bounced back immediately with a strong 10.6. He was still in silver medal position after 17 shots.

Glory beckoned.

Three shots later, his competition was done. On the 18th, he shot a 10.1 – his second lowest score of the competition. It put him outside the medal bracket. He desperately scrambled to fight back. A 10.4 in his final shot would have put him in a shoot-off to stay in a fight for bronze. A 10.5 would have assured him of a medal. He had shot a score of 10.4 or higher on 15 of the 19 shots he had taken in the final.

Yet, when he needed it the most, Babuta’s aim failed him. He shot a 9.5 – his lowest score of the competition.

As he placed his rifle back on its stand and walked to the sitting area, where the rest of the eliminated players sat, Babuta tried to be stoic. He clapped politely when Lihao ended up winning with an Olympic record.

But he was stunned. As was every other Indian in the stands. As the competition ended, Babuta walked up to Lihao and shook his hand and did the same for the other medal winners.

From the stands, an Indian coach texted a colleague. “I don’t think I can hold my tears back,” she cried. She wiped her tears and walked down to where Babuta was and hugged him. His facade shattered and he began to weep bitterly as well.

His colleague, Elavenil Valarivan, came down from the stands and hugged him and took him away from the official broadcaster to the privacy of the changing room where he could process his emotions in private.

He came out eventually and decided to speak to the media. In a bizarre way, it almost turned out to be a cathartic experience. Babuta spoke about how he was processing a mixture of pride of making the Olympic final and finishing fourth in the world alongside the disappointment of finishing outside the medals. He said he had finished his ‘rona dhona’ (crying) and would give himself a day to deal with his emotions before he returned to training.

He had spoken to Abhinav Bindra – an Olympic gold medallist and also a fourth-place finisher.

“He met me and told me that this fourth place will make me stronger and will help me in the future. I need to accept it and move on with a smile,” Babuta said.

Right on cue came the question about when was the last time he had finished fourth in a similar way.

While the inquiry may have seemed insensitive, Babuta took the opportunity to partake in some self-deprecating humour.  

“I have a few fourth-place finishes in my career but I really don’t recall any of them. Whatever they were, they wouldn’t have come in any competition like this one. I don’t think I’ll have a more memorable fourth-place finish than this one,” he said, finally allowing himself a smile.  

Earlier in the day, the pair of Manu Bhaker and Sarabjot Singh qualified for the bronze medal match of the 10m air pistol mixed team event.

Manu, who has already won an individual bronze in the women’s 10m event and Sarabjot, who missed out on a place in the final of the men’s 10m event by a matter of hitting fewer inner-10s, finished Monday’s qualification round with a score of 580, ahead of South Korea’s Ye Jin Oh and Wonho Lee, who they will play for a chance to win a second medal for India in the competition.