Rudrankksh Patil wears his heart on his sleeve on way to winning the 10m air rifle bronze at World Championships

Rudrankksh Patil belies the many traits that have come to be identified with the champions of his trade. Unlike the serious and deadpan faces he’s surrounded , the world champion walks into the arena with a swagger and smirk that never leave him. He exudes a laidback body language, and during the course of a 30-minute 10m air rifle final, takes you on board a whirlwind of emotions that he isn’t shy of displaying. Patil can be many things; a poker player, though, is unlikely to be one of them.
On Friday, the 19-year-old put his hand on his chest and let out an audible sigh that could be heard in spite of the din in the finals hall of the MP State Shooting Academy.
Patil is 5’7”, walks stiffly in the uncomfortable shooting gear and oozes calmness. A few moments ago, he was under the pump, with beads of sweat forming on his forehead and tense. “We don’t have a heart rate monitor but I think it reached 200. I was making sure it (the heart) doesn’t pop out,” Patil laughs, moments after winning the 10m air rifle bronze medal at the shooting World Cup.
It was actually that tense a final. For most parts, Patil was in survival mode; battling elimination with each series until he dragged himself back into contention before upping his game in the later stages where he unleashed a flurry of daddy 10s to rise from seventh in a field of eight to third, taking down one opponent after other with each shot.
His stirring comeback also made sure there wasn’t a Chinese sweep of the podium. Still, they took home the gold and silver medals, with Tokyo Olympics silver medall Lihao Sheng and teenager Du Linshu – who won five gold medals at the junior world championship last year – being dominant throughout.
This was the second installment of the Patil vs China rivalry. The last time when he’d run into them, at the World Championships last year, it was the Indian who had come out on top against the Chinese duo that had won gold and silver at the Tokyo Games. In a busy year that has another World Championship and the Asian Games, Friday’s final provided a glimpse into what awaits the Indian, one of the few shooters capable of challenging the Chinese dominance in the event based on current form.
In fact, as the Paris Olympics appear on the horizon, Patil is emerging as the country’s biggest hope in a constantly-churning world of Indian shooting. In the last 12 months, the teenager from Thane hasn’t returned empty-handed from a global competition, scaled to the top of the rankings mountain (he is currently 8th) and having already won the Olympics quota, has the liberty of time to fine-tune his technique before the big event.
He isn’t the first prodigious talent, though. Leading up to the Tokyo Olympics, India had another shooter, Saurabh Chaudhary, who displayed similar form and appeared to be a sure-shot medal contender until he got crushed under the weight of expectations and the pressure of an Olympics. As Chaudhary charts his way back to the top, the challenge for the Indian team management will be to ensure the same does not happen to Patil.
Patil doesn’t seem preoccupied with any of these thoughts. Right now, he seems confident in his ability to summon big 10s to bail him out of any situation. It’s a target he has set himself for this year – to shoot high 10s when it matters. That’s like a T20 special practising the art of hitting the ball out of the park at will.
It’s Patil’s calling card. When he won the World Championship gold last year, each of his 15 shots was a 10-plus. In the qualification round, 55 out of his 60 shots were 10.3 or more. It’s this consency, this ability to find close groupings that earned him an Olympic quota.
On Friday, more evidence of this was on offer. Each of his 60 shots in the qualifying round was 10 or more than 10. He began strongly, saw his energy drop a little in the middle where the scores dropped – even then, he was hitting 10s consently – but gathered composure to finish as strongly and make it into the medal rounds.
Patil was uncharacterically error-strewn in the final, where he shot a rare 9.9 and at the halfway mark, it looked like he’d be among the first ones to be eliminated. But 12th shot onwards, he scripted an unlikely comeback. “I was trembling. My hands were shaking and my heart rate was very high. This was the most energetic final I have played,” he said.
In that condition, here’s how his grouping looked: 10.6, 10.7, 10.5, 10.5, 10.8, 10.8, 10.7, 10.6, 10.6, 10.8, 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7. It was incredible precision under pressure, helping him overtake Hungary’s an Peni, compatriot Hriday Hazarika, Japan’s Naoya Okada and China’s Haonan Yu to clinch the bronze – the scores and a march to the podium that only add to his growing reputation.