YOUNG GUN
there is a quiet determination to Apurvi Chandela. The first-time Olympian was just 15 when she saw an interview of Abhinav Bindra after he had shot his way into the history books at Beijing 2008, an event, she says, that inspired her to take up the sport. Her father, Jaipur-based restaurateur Kuldeep Singh Chandela, took the football- and cricket-loving girl to a shooting range where she tried her hand at both the rifle and pistol. Like Bindra, she’d make the rifle her weapon of choice. After only two weeks in the sport, she participated in a state competition and won a bronze. Soon Kuldeep would gift her a rifle. Later, her uncle, Hem Singh, built a shooting range at his home in Hanuman Nagar, Jaipur, for her to train. Eight years later, she is representing India in the same event as her idol, who she now refers to as “Abhinav bhaiyya”.
“She has a fantastic temperament for a concentration-driven sport,” says Viren Rasquinha of Olympic Gold Quest. “She is calm and focused and likes to train on her own. She’s quite shy and likes to be by herself.” Apurvi’s mother Bindu accompanies her to all tournaments. “With so much travelling, she needs someone with whom she can talk to and vent,” says Kuldeep, whose wife was in Serbia with their daughter at the time of the interview.
When in India, when she isn’t in Gurgaon, where she lives, or Faridabad, where she trains with coach Stanislav Lapidus, she lets her hair down in Jaipur. Here she loves to play with her three dogs, hang out with her close friends. She runs, meditates and swims (her father has got a pool made at home). She also occasionally indulges in desserts from her elder sister’s patisserie, Dzurt—one of the small luxuries of being a rifle shooter rather than playing a more physically demanding sport.
For the Olympics, Chandela will bank on the resilience that helped her overcome a ligament tear in the ankle to win gold in Glasgow in 2014. “She knows how to handle pressure,” says Rasquinha, himself a former national hockey captain. “My advice to her was to enjoy the experience and not be overwhelmed by the pressure, and to focus on things within her control.” Chandela will be at ease since her family will be in Rio rooting for her. Says Kuldeep Singh Chandela: “I tell her, keep on doing good karma and don’t think about the results.” Easier said than done.
Chandela will bank on the resilience that helped her overcome a ligament tear to win gold in Glasgow in 2014