"He should have been here" - Manu Bhaker missed Saurabh Chaudhary at mixed team event in Paris Olympics

Saurabh Chaudhary is an Indian shooter who broke the world record by winning a historic gold medal at the 2018 Asian Games (Jakarta and Palembang). However, he missed out on the Hangzhou Asian Games five years later and also the Paris Olympics. There is no recent news about him whether he is still shooting or not, and even the top shooters in the country are not aware of his current situation.

Keeping aside what happened, had fans thought of Saurabh Chaudhary as a medal hopeful at both the 2023 Asian Games and the recently concluded Paris Olympics, they wouldn't have been wrong about it. At least India's first woman medalist in shooting, Manu Bhaker's words hint at the same.

"Honestly, he is the best shooter I have seen in my career. Nobody, not even a foreign shooter, comes close. He is the finest one I have seen in my life. We don’t quite know what happened... whether he lost interest or it was something else. But it is our responsibility to give him the opportunity if he still wants to shoot and to motivate him to get back to his true calibre. I really felt for him in the mixed event and thought, ‘he should have been here,’" she said to Hindustan Times.

---

India's shooting heroics at the Paris Olympics 2024

India's best performance at the Paris Olympics came from the shooting contingent. The nation won a total of six medals in the quadrennial event and three of those came in shooting. It started with Manu Bhaker's individual bronze in the women's 10m air pistol event. Following this triumph, Bhaker paired with Sarabjot Singh to win yet another bronze medal, this time in the mixed team 10m air pistol event. Lastly, it was Swapnil Kusale, who won a bronze in the men's 50m 3P discipline.

Aman Sehrawat (bronze in men's 57kg freestyle wrestling), Indian hockey team (defeated Spain 2-1 in the bronze medal match) and Neeraj Chopra (silver in men's javelin throw) got the rest of the medals for the mation.