Saurabh Chaudhary has won a 10m air pistol medal at an ISSF World Cup.
If you read that and thought, hello, did I just click on an article from a time before we knew what a coronavirus was, you’d be forgiven.
For those not in the know, a quick recap: Saurabh was Indian sports’ golden child going into the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, the man who would be India’s next big Olympic star after Abhinav Bindra. Leading up to the Games, he was the reigning Asian Games champion at 16, won World Championship (junior) gold and bronze, and an astonishing seven World Cup golds, two silvers, two bronzes (five of those individual medals). He was as close to a sure bet for an Olympic medal as India had ever gotten.
What followed, though, was a much-talked-about Olympic failure and despite an individual World Cup gold in early 2022, a complete dive out of the spotlight. Aged just 19, he’d gone from near-superstardom to plain ol’ obscurity. Saurabh made it to just one World Cup between 2022-2025 and finished 30th in qualifying in that one. He wasn’t even close to making either the 2023 Asian Games squad or the 2024 Paris Olympics.
A bitter fallout with his childhood coach, Amit Sheoran appeared to have taken its toll, and Saurabh was barely registering a mark on an ever-expanding, ever-progressing national scene. Manu Bhaker, with whom he had won many a mixed team gold at many an event, became double Olympic medalist. Saurabh struggled to even make it to the trials for the national team…. till the calendar ticked over to the 2025 National Championships.
In qualification there he broke the national record, with a score of 591. In the final he only finished fifth, but that qualification round had given him belief, reminded him of he was. “I’m not sad. How can I be? It’s the first time I’ve made the final of a National Championship since 2021,” he told the Sportstar at the time. He talked about how he had not been sure what was wrong with him, why things were not going his way. He tried changing pistols before going back. He kept at it, kept at it. Plenty within the shooting community believed in him (Manu famously called him “the best shooter of this generation”) and tried to help, but nothing had clicked… till something did.
At the nationals, he felt something important: confidence. “When you squeeze the trigger, you want to have the confidence that the shot will go where you have fired it. That is the main thing. It’s not like you are shooting just to get it over with or that things are not going where you want them to go. The score has nothing to do with it,” he told Sportstar. “It doesn’t matter if you are shooting high-tens or low-nines. Confidence is something you feel even before your shot hits the target. You want to feel you have shot your best. I think that confidence is coming back now.”
Come April 2025, and that confidence manifested in a spot back in the India squad. The time away had helped him, he believed. In the Buenos Aires World Cup last week, Saurabh teamed up with Suruchi Singh to beat his former partner Manu, and Ravinder to win bronze. It was his first World Cup medal in three years, his first mixed team one in four. He only finished 18th in the individual event, but the mixed team medal was the surest indication that there was real progress. If only he could crack it solo now…
And along came the Lima World Cup.
Having qualified to his first individual World Cup final in three years, Saurabh started brilliantly in the final on Tuesday, hitting 50.7 to place second after five shots. After 10 shots, though, there was a dip and suddenly he was down to fourth with a score of 99.8. After 12, when the eliminations started, he was down to fifth (118.6), which is where he stayed at the 14-shot mark as well (139.4)… watching it live, it felt like another opportunity missed, another setback in this long journey of rediscovery. Momentum was firmly against him.
Medal ‼️ �� �� And it’s the mercurial @SChaudhary2002 who gives ���� their first medal �� of the Lima ���� Shooting World Cup. Comes 3rd in the 10m air pistol �� men.���� �� #ISSFWorldCup #Lima #Peru #Shooting #ShootingSports #IndianShootingTeam #IndianShooting #TeamIndia #India pic.twitter.com/g9R6qTJOxE
– NRAI (@OfficialNRAI) April 15, 2025
Then came two shots that screamed prime Saurabh Chaudhary: 10.6, 10.2 and he was back to second after 16 shots (160.2). With a reminder that he was still mid-journey, his next two shots were 10.0 and 9.3 (199.9), pulling him down to third and that’s where he’d stay after two final shots of 9.6 and 9.6 (219.1).
Not vintage Saurabh but pointing that out would be nitpicking. What matters is that Saurabh Chaudhary’s back doing the thing that he loves most, and back doing it well, on the international stage. After three years, he’s finally standing on an individual World Cup podium. This bronze of his has a distinctly golden sheen. Slow and steady, but you can feel one of the great redemption arcs loading.
April 16, 2025. Saurabh Chaudhary has won a 10m air pistol medal at an ISSF World Cup.
Oh, he’s back.
