‘Avani Lekhara is a perfectionist, I sat on a wheelchair and shot with her to understand the challenges’ Firstpost

It’s not very often that we talk to the men and women behind successful athletes, to understand their challenges. What is the ecosystem like in which they function? What changes would they like to see?

So much of news coverage is centred around the visible achievers, that the people who are working painstakingly behind the scenes to enable athletes to end up on podiums, with medals around their necks, are often forgotten.

A conversation with someone who knows a sports system inside out, as both premier athlete and coach, can be an eye-opener in more ways than one. A chat with Indian shooter Rakesh Manpat, who made waves at the state and national level shooting, is a national level gold medallist, recipient of the 2012 Eklavya award by the government of Karnataka, and a very successful coach, was one such conversation.

Rakesh, who runs his academy in Bengaluru, has coached shooters like Apurvi Chandela, Meghana Sajjanar and is currently coaching double Paralympic gold medallist, Avani Lekhara.

In this chat, Rakesh talks about the changing landscape of Indian shooting, the process of coaching Avani to Paralympic success, the changes needed in the Indian shooting ecosystem vis a vis coaching, and more.

This is part one of a special interview with Rakesh Manpat.

Excerpts…

As someone who has been involved with shooting for such a long time both as an athlete and as a successful coach, how much would you say has the landscape of Indian shooting changed in the last say two decades? There can’t be one straight-up black-or-white answer to this, of course. But what are the things that you are happy about and what are the things that you are unhappy with?

Rakesh: There has been a tremendous change. I started in 2005, so this is my 19th year. The state level is different, the national level is different and each state has a (different) story. Within say the state of Karnataka, there are different districts and each district has a different story to tell. What is happening with the national team is different and what is happening at the grassroots level is different. One, overall positive thing is that the number of shooters is growing. Is the quality also growing? Yes, the quality is growing. Is the bench strength of shooting growing? Yes, it is. Is shooting one of the brighter prospects in the coming years? Yes, most certainly. Many things have changed. Transparency of scoring has changed that has been the biggest factor that has changed the landscape of shooting. Investment in sport has changed, and the government has played a major role in putting up big infrastructure. This infrastructure does make a big difference, when it comes to facilitating the preparedness of the Indian team.

Athletes coming into the coaching system have also been changed. Earlier we used to have officials. Even now we have borderline officials becoming coaches. That is still happening. If you talk about selection, athletes get tested 6-7 times a year in the Indian team trials, but how many times are the coaches tested? How many times are we taking the feedback of athletes on coaches? Who is giving feedback on coaches? We are axing the coaches once in four years. To ascertain how good a coach is what is our evaluation matrix for that? That is still poor. I see people, who, as we speak, haven’t even played internationally and they have been selected to be coaches. Some may not even have produced one national team player. How are they then going to treat a national level Indian player? It’s a race, right? You win the race to make the Indian team. Some people lose the race. Now, should the losers get to dictate the winners? Typically, it shouldn’t (happen). That is not a healthy sign, right? So, coaching I think still has a huge scope for improvement, in terms of what kind of coaches can be brought into the system. I think it will improve in due course of time. Certain academies are doing their job of giving exposure to coaches and then looking at how they can be up-skilled and then placed in the Indian team. I think an empowered panel that can select the coaches and evaluate the coaches from time to time could be a game changer.

Talking about coaching, there is also the hurdle of athletes not being able to take their personal coaches with them for big events, like the Olympics. What are the internal wranglings behind this?

Rakesh: At the Tokyo Olympics, there were five (Indian) athletes who were either world number 1 or former world number 1. None of their personal coaches went to Tokyo. What is the qualification of a coach? Your student doing well – shouldn’t that be the criteria for being a good coach? There’s also the flip side of the coin where (there is) a good shooter and there’s a little bit of pressure from two to three corners of the state federation or some corners of the fraternity, whereby they (coaches) tag themselves with the athletes as their coaches. That is a different and difficult scenario to handle. So, that empowered panel should be able to ascertain whether the coach is genuine or not. They (the coaches) are typically the ones who are meant to take the athletes even to the Olympic Games. That level of preparedness should be there. From the state level match to the national level match, you have one coach, who is working with the athlete up to the Indian team and then suddenly you expect some foreign coach (to work with the athletes). By foreign I also mean an Indian player changing the coach at that level that is a person who is foreign to the system.

Talking about personal coaches, again, what is it like with the other top shooting countries? What has your observation been?

Rakesh: Certain countries like Croatia were also finding it hard to get their personal coaches through. Since it’s a federal system it all goes down to voting and it’s a closed group of people who decide these things. It’s not a country policy, it’s a federation policy. A country cannot enforce these policies on a federation. The federation can do it for themselves. So, each country has its own policies. So, we need to be smart enough. Are we always comparing ourselves to another country? Are we not smart enough to think for ourselves? We have to address our own homegrown problems.

So, would it also be fair to say that Indian shooters always want to travel with their personal coaches, if they have personal coaches, but they are often turned down?

Rakesh: We have to understand why this happens. So, let’s say that I make the Indian team and if I have enough confidence in my national coach, why would I need my personal coach? When grassroots level coaches (personal coaches) typically travel with elite athletes, it doesn’t make economic sense, the academy (that the coach works at) gets affected. They (academy) tend to hire another coach. Then that coach poaches some 10-20 athletes. These are the kinds of issues we face here. Our absence creates chaos at the grassroots level. So, the personal coaches are not forthcoming to do that in the first place. But when the high-performing athletes go to the national team and see that there is no nationalism in the camp, they don’t have enough faith in them. Or they don’t see enough technical sense. Or they don’t take these personal coaches into confidence.

One coach who has expressed similar sentiments is Jaspal Rana. He wasn’t initially given accreditation for the Paris Olympics, where his ward, Manu Bhaker made history by winning two medals, because he was a personal coach and not the national coach. He also later talked about how he wasn’t paid for a while etc. What was your take on what happened to him? Is he, in a way, an embodiment of what you are talking about?

Rakesh: Definitely, yes. It’s also very individual. It’s a very individual thing. I may not be in the best position to comment on what transpired. I met some Australian coaches who came to the Padukone-Dravid centre (in Bengaluru) and they were very keen to understand why Indian shooting has grown. When I spoke to them, they said that they hire coaches from the Netherlands, because they can’t handle the infighting within their system. It’s very easy to find a foreign coach and pay big paychecks, but in the process, we lose our own talent. It’s disheartening and demotivating to read what Jaspal Rana has gone through. Who are these coaches? They are athletes. 90% of these people (coaches) are athletes, especially the good coaches. These athletes have put in their energy, time, effort, and finances. Sports is high reward, but also high risk. In coaching also there is high risk and high reward. Generally, it is high risk.

How many people are really aware of who has put in the sweat (hard work) behind these athletes? Who was Manu Bhaker’s first coach? How many people know that? Where were her formative years spent, before she made the Indian team? Who knows about that? Why isn’t that person recognised? Just like that, how many more athletes are out there, whose personal coaches are losing motivation at the grassroots level? Aren’t they worthy of being recognised? It’s difficult as coaches. They have to hire space (to train), nobody gives you space for free. It’s not a Gurukul coaching system anymore. For that it costs money. When athletes come in (begin training) they are young, anywhere between 10-14 years. They don’t understand money. (Some) parents think they can get a coach for free. Coaching is time consuming, there’s effort involved, and there are infrastructure costs. It’s pure business. Good business-bad business, based on what they charge and how they charge. We can’t shy away from the fact that coaches need to be paid. Whether it is Jaspal Rana or any other coach in the country they have to be paid enough.

Let’s talk about coaching in detail now in the context of the recent Paris Paralympics. You are coaching Avani Lekhara someone who made history by becoming the first Indian woman to win two gold medals at the Paralympics when she defended her 10m air rifle gold. How did this collaboration with Avani begin? Who approached whom?

Rakesh: In 2017-18, they (Avani and her family) approached me in Bengaluru, while I was training some of the best shooters like Apurvi (Chandela), Meghana (Sajjanar), and two to three other Indian team players. At that time, I had started my academy, it was my first year. So, there was no possibility, with my financial situation at that time, I was not in a position to do anything free of cost. Avani had a sponsor in GoSports, backing her. So, I gave a quote for elite training and somehow it didn’t go through, even though she (Avani) was happy with my training at the range. So, then she went on to train with somebody else. Fast forward to 2022, sometime in May, her father reached out to ask ‘is there a way you can train her?’ I took a flight the next day to Delhi, to first evaluate whether I can train, if I was in a position to train. I met her and realised that ‘ok, I can train her’. I was clear, right from day one, that I will not be charging her any fee. In the last 4-5 years (before coaching Avani) of running my academy, I was stable enough and did not need to charge a para-athlete.

I feel that they go through a lot and the least we can do is to support them in every possible way. Olympic Gold Quest were her sponsors at that time. I was the second athlete to be funded by OGQ, after Gagan Narang, in 2009. So, I was happy enough to speak to them to say that I will do this free of cost for her (Avani) and that whatever budget they had can be utilised for her well-being. She didn’t have a full-time physio travelling with her. Her mother would take the entire load and stress of carrying things around for her. Nobody is interested in writing about the painstaking efforts that her mother has put in, despite being in a government job. She would manage herself to accompany Avani everywhere and lift rifles and other equipment. It’s very, very tough. That’s the first thing I looked at and requested that they (OGQ) change that.

Could you share with me some of the things that you worked on or focussed on the most with Avani and what were the big challenges…

Rakesh: One (challenge) was to understand technically, the challenges. So, I competed (shot) sitting with her on a wheelchair to be able to relate to her and to gain her confidence. To be able to replicate shooting in her style. We competed that way so that I could feel what she is feeling. Just standing and coaching, I feel, would not suffice. Then we tried to work on technical aspects, trying to understand her technical skillsets, trying to improvise on her technical abilities. Also, of course, during competition to keep her psychologically motivated, being able to ascertain the situation. Mostly to facilitate them and their expectations. Avani is a perfectionist, which is a very good attitude. Being able to cater to that also requires a certain level of perfectionism. Just being able to accept it that she is a perfectionist I don’t think many people would be in a position to do that.

I was confident that she would win more medals, because she won multiple medals the last two to three times that we were at international competitions. I work in a different space. I am conscious enough to be aware of where there is possible value addition (that I can provide) in the ecosystem, considering I am still an active athlete. One of the mandates that some of the federations have is that they cannot have active athletes on the federation’s coaching panel. This is silly, if you ask me because there are some extremely good athletes who are still good coaches, who know the art of managing athletes, (but) we don’t have acceptance of these things, I think.

How different and also how big a challenge is it to coach or mentor para-shooters vis a vis able-bodied shooters?

Rakesh: Para-athlete coaching is difficult. One because they have medical conditions. To be able to understand them itself is a task. They are subjected to harsh environments. Stepping out of their homes is itself their first victory. That’s the first medal. In fact, I was joking with Avani’s mother last year that she also deserves a medal. I told her ‘the effort you put in is more than what Avani puts in’. In terms of physical labour, they (people accompanying para-athletes) are like a porter, coach, manager literally to that extent. So, it’s tough that way. More financial resources and mental resources are needed for them, at every step. That way, hats off to the PCI (Paralympic Committee of India) the work they are doing to just take the team (to competitions) and come back it’s not easy.