Manu Bhakar (English: Manu Bhaker, born- 18 February 2002, Jhajjar, Haryana) is an Indian woman shooter. He won two gold medals for India in the 2018 ISSF World Cup. She is the youngest female player in India to win gold in this competition. Manu Bhakar has won two gold in the air pistol event at the 2018 Commonwealth Games at the age of 16. In the year 2020, he was also awarded the prestigious Arjuna Award.
Introduction
Manu Bhakar was born on 18 February 2002 in Goria village of Jhajjar, Haryana. He studied at Universal Public Senior Secondary School. His father is an engineer in the Merchant Navy and mother is a teacher.[1]
Shrinking
Manu Bhakar started with boxing in the game of sports. He was very fond of sports since childhood and was then just 6 years old. He suffered an eye injury while boxing in childhood, after which his mother refused to box and he gave up boxing. But due to craze and passion towards sports, he did not break away from the game. After this, he also showed his game in kabaddi, cricket, karate, and skating. On seeing this, his trend was swimming and then towards the lawn tennis.
One day Manu Bhaker was roaming in the shooting range with her father and at the same time his father asked him to shoot and then Manu Bhaker shot very well in the first time. It was from here that Manu Bhakar’s interest in shooting started increasing. After this, she started taking shooting training in school itself. After this, national coach Jaspal Rana gave training to Manu Bhakar for shooting. Manu Bhaker started shooting in his school in 2016. The senior secondary school located 25 km from his village Goria has only shooting range. Where he was given daily training for 5 hours. This can be gauged from this that how much hard work Manu Bhakar worked in such a short time and today he is a national champion.
Achievements
In the year 2017, Manu Bhakar set a new national record by winning 9 gold medals at the National Championship in Kerala. In the same year, Bhakar won a silver medal in the Asian Junior Championship. Manu Bhakar defeated two -time champion Alejandra Zawala in the 10m air pistol final of the 2018 International Sport Shooting World Cup in Guadalajra, Mexico. With this victory, she became the youngest Indian to win a gold medal in the World Cup. He also won double gold at the ISSF Junior World Cup in 2018. The same year, at the age of 16, she won the gold medal in the women’s 10m air pistol event at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Along with his score, he also set a new record in the Commonwealth Games. In May 2019, Manu Bhakar qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in the 10m air pistol event, finishing fourth in the Munich ISSF World Cup. In August 2020, Manu Bhakar was awarded the Arjuna Award by President Ram Nath Kovind at a virtual award ceremony.
