After Karmakar and Bindra, it's Babuta's turn to deal with pain of finishing fourth in Olympics

Arjun Babuta (Pic: File Pic)

Agony was writ large on the face of Arjun Babuta after the Indian shooter missed an Olympic medal by a whisker despite being in the top-three for the majority of men's 10m air rifle final here on Monday.

By Arjun's own admission, fourth is probably the worst position to finish as "you have got nothing to show for the tremendous amount of work you put in" to prepare for the Olympics.

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Joydeep Karmakar has gone through what Arjun is experiencing at the moment, having finished fourth in the 50m rifle prone at 2012 London Olympics.

One can only hope that Arjun doesn't have to deal with the pain forever like Karmakar and the 25-year-old gets another shot at glory in the Summer Games four years later.

Abhinav Bindra, India's sole Olympic gold medal-winning shooter, too had come fourth in Rio 2016 in the same event where Arjun suffered a sudden heartbreak.

Having been there, Bindra was among the first ones to console a crestfallen Arjun after the disappointment at the Chateauroux Shooting Centre.

"He told me that fourth place will make me stronger and that it was important to move on. Whether you laugh it off or do something else, he told me to take it with a smile and move," said Babuta, who did well to regain his composure and speak to the travelling Indian media.

The look of despair on Arjun's face was understandable as the shooter from Fazilka was in the top-three till the 18th shot of the 24-shot final before a 9.5 on his 20th attempt led to his elimination from the medal race.

The Indian showed very little signs of nerves before faltering at the business end of the final. A 10.1 on the 18th shot saw him slip to fourth from second and he could not bounce back from there on. A 9.9 on the 13th, one of his two sub-10 shots, also did not help his cause.

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China's world record holder Sheng Lihao dominated the field to end with a second gold medal of the Paris Games. The silver went to Sweden's Victor Lindgren and Croatia's Miran Maricic ended with bronze.

"It was not my day. It is very hard to deal with fourth. It is the worst place to finish. It is disheartening," said Babuta, who believes in luck and that was not on his side in the final.

"I need to think about where I could have improved. There are lot of thoughts going on and I feel I have to fight them with counter thoughts. Eventually I have to tell myself that I gave my 100 percent.

"But if I don't finish in the top-three, we can put on luck or any weakness I am not able to spot right now. One can be never ready for a fourth place finish," lamented Babuta, who has multiple medals to his name at the world and Asian level.

Rifle coach Suma Shirur, who has experienced the extreme pressure of an Olympic final back in 2004, was at a loss for words to describe what went wrong with Arjun on Monday.

"I think he shot great. He was so consistent. It is just heart-wrenching. One can say it was not meant to be but he will bounce back," she said.

Arjun was working with two mental coaches in the lead-up to the Olympics but he did feel the heat in the big final of his debut Games. The scores being announced after every shot following the first 10 shots also played on his mind. He tried to shut himself out but in the end, he was not entirely successful.

"I try to just be in the zone, be with my process. My technique, my breathing, calmness, aiming, triggering. I am always with it. If I know the score in between, I eliminate that thought and come back to the process.

"I listen to announcements in between and listen to everything. But eventually, I bring myself back to the zone. "Every time when I had to pick up a rifle, I would remind myself of the process and pick it up. Thought of a medal definitely comes at the back of the head," he said.

Babuta needed a strong 20th shot to remain in the top-three but he could only manage a 9.5, an indication that pressure indeed impacted an otherwise mature performance.

Explaining the thinking at that time, the Indian said he just went for the perfect shot.
"I was just aiming for 10.9, the release felt good. I was with my process. I was aware that now it's very close and I have to do my best.

"I still don't know why that shot went out because my execution was really good," said Babuta, who promised to bounce back in the next competition.

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