Anjali Bhagwat picked up a rifle as a college cadet in Mumbai and went on to top the world rankings in 10m air rifle. Along the way she reached an Olympic final in Sydney, swept four Commonwealth Games golds in Manchester and won the ISSF Champion of Champions title in Munich.
Name: Anjali Bhagwat (née Vedpathak) Born: 5 December 1969, Mumbai | Sport: Shooting | Events: 10m air rifle, 50m rifle three positions
A cadet at Kirti College
She was born Anjali Vedpathak into a Marathi family in Mumbai. Sport was always part of her life, but shooting arrived almost by accident. She chose Kirti College partly because of its strong National Cadet Corps unit, and it was through NCC training that she first handled a rifle.
The start was unusually fast. Within days of first holding a gun she was competing at the national championships for Maharashtra, and she came away with a silver medal. Her first coach was Sanjay Chakravarthy, and the early years were spent on domestic ranges, slowly building the technique that top-level rifle shooting demands.
It was a long climb. She spent the best part of a decade on the national circuit before she began to make an impression on the world stage, and Indian shooting at the time offered little in the way of equipment, funding or foreign exposure.
The Hungarian coach and the Commonwealth breakthrough
Things changed at the end of the 1990s. A group of Indian women rifle shooters, many of them former NCC cadets, began training under the Hungarian coach Laszlo Szucsak. Bhagwat worked with him for about a year, and he later called her the best talent he had seen in his coaching career.
Results followed quickly. At the 1999 Commonwealth Shooting Championships in Auckland she won individual gold in both the 10m air rifle and the 50m rifle three positions, along with team gold in air rifle. She repeated the feat at the 2001 Commonwealth Championships in England, this time winning all four individual and team events.
An Olympic final in Sydney
Bhagwat went to the Sydney Olympics in 2000 as a late wildcard entry. She arrived without ammunition and had to rely on a manufacturer who agreed to supply her once she was there.
In the 10m air rifle qualification she shot 394 out of 400, tied for sixth, and earned a place in the eight-woman final. She became the first Indian woman shooter to reach an Olympic final. She scored 99.1 in the final and finished eighth after losing a shoot-off for seventh place. The placing mattered less than the precedent. Indian rifle shooters had seen that an Olympic final was within reach.
Four golds in Manchester and the top of the world
The 2002 season was the finest of her career. At the Commonwealth Games in Manchester she won four gold medals, in the individual and pairs events of both the 10m air rifle and the 50m rifle three positions, setting new records in her finals along the way. She also won team silver in air rifle at the Asian Games in Busan with Deepali Deshpande and Suma Shirur.
That year she rose to number one in the world rankings for the 10m air rifle. At the ISSF World Cup Final in Munich she took silver in air rifle, and in the same city she then won the Champion of Champions title, a combined air rifle event for the season’s best shooters. She has since described it as the greatest match of her life.
World Cup Final gold and later Olympics
She went one better in 2003. At the ISSF World Cup Final in Milan she won the women’s 10m air rifle, becoming the first Indian woman to win a World Cup Final gold. At the Afro-Asian Games in Hyderabad the same year she won gold in the three positions event and silver in air rifle.
Bhagwat competed at two more Olympics. At Athens in 2004 she finished outside the final in the three positions event. She earned India a quota for Beijing 2008 by finishing fourth in the three positions at a World Cup in Brazil in 2006, but in Beijing she again missed the finals, scoring 571 in the three positions. At the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne she added a pairs silver in the three positions.
Life after competition
Bhagwat married Mumbai businessman Mandar Bhagwat in December 2000 and later moved to Pune, where she set up a training range at home and coaches young shooters. She has served on selection panels for national sports awards and has worked as a television expert during Commonwealth Games coverage. Over her career she set several international and national records, including Commonwealth marks in both of her main events.
Career record and honours
- Olympic Games: finalist, 10m air rifle, Sydney 2000 (8th); also competed at Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008
- Commonwealth Games 2002, Manchester: four gold medals (10m air rifle individual and pairs, 50m rifle three positions individual and pairs)
- Commonwealth Games 2006, Melbourne: silver in 50m rifle three positions pairs
- ISSF World Cup Final 2003, Milan: gold in 10m air rifle
- ISSF World Cup Final 2002, Munich: silver in 10m air rifle
- ISSF Champion of Champions 2002, Munich: winner
- World number one in 10m air rifle, 2002
- Asian Games 2002, Busan: silver in 10m air rifle team event
- Afro-Asian Games 2003: gold in 50m rifle three positions, silver in 10m air rifle
- Commonwealth Shooting Championships: multiple gold medals in 1999, 2001 and 2005
- Arjuna Award (2000)
- Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, now the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna (2002-03)
- Shiv Chhatrapati Award, Maharashtra (1992)