I don’t quite remember the nitty-gritty of my first conversation with Jaspal Rana. The year, tournament and circumstances have all blurred.

However, there’s no mistaking that it was on a Saturday, approximately four to five years ago, that I placed my first call to him after introducing myself over a text message.

For when Jaspal answered the call, he enquired, almost incredulously, “Why don’t you ask your boss for weekend day-offs, man? If you are talking to me on a Saturday evening, something’s definitely not right.”

I laughed. He didn’t. And for a moment, I was almost sure he was half a thought away from calling my Editor and expressing his displeasure.

That little moment perfectly captured the man Jaspal was. A champion of ruthless discipline on the shooting range, yet remarkably human away from it. Someone who could spend hours chasing perfection with a pistol in hand, but who never forgot that life existed beyond medals, targets and deadlines.

Born in 1976, Jaspal grew up in a family steeped in shooting. His father, Narayan Singh Rana, a 1971 war veteran who served in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and later became Uttarakhand’s first Sports Minister in 2000, was Jaspal’s first guide as he picked up his weapon of choice, a pistol. His siblings, Sushma and Subhash, took up the sport as well.

Jaspal was only 12 when he made his national debut. And merely six years later, he had already bagged the Arjuna Award, the country’s second-highest sporting accolade. Three years later, he was conferred the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian honour.

Jaspal holds the record as India’s most decorated Commonwealth Games athlete, with a tally of 15 medals, nine gold, four silver and two bronze, won across four editions.

However, more than these medals, there was that one win in 1994 that mattered to him. At the Junior World Championships in Milan, painful boils had erupted across Jaspal’s knee, making even the simple act of standing an immense ordeal. Doctors advised caution, and common sense demanded rest. Jaspal chose neither and ran away from the hospital. He didn’t even take the prescribed tablets lest they mess up his doping samples.

Gritting his teeth through the pain, he stepped onto the firing line the next day and produced a performance for the ages, winning gold and equalling the junior world record.

Long before the legend came an almost irrational refusal to be beaten.

In the years that followed, our conversations became more frequent. At one point, inadvertently, he had become my coach too, teaching me technicalities no textbook would, so that I could understand and, in turn, cover the sport better.

The topic of the 1994 Junior Worlds inevitably came up during one of these chats. He brushed it aside with characteristic modesty, saying, “If you really want to look at model shooters, look at Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang. All extremely dedicated to their art.”

In 2017, when the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on imported shooting equipment sparked concern, Jaspal emerged as one of its most vocal critics. He warned that steep taxation on pistols, rifles and other accessories would make the sport prohibitively expensive for young athletes and hurt India’s competitive pipeline.

For him, it was never about personal legacy. The fight was always about protecting the sport itself.

His methods were sometimes as polarising as they were effective. A bitter and very public fallout with Manu Bhaker ahead of the Tokyo Olympics threatened to overshadow one of Indian shooting’s most successful athlete-coach partnerships. However, the duo eventually buried the hatchet, and Manu went on to make history by winning two medals at the next edition of the Summer Games.

Legendary Indian shooting coach and multiple Asian Games gold medallist Jaspal Rana won the Coach of the Year award at the Sportstar Aces Awards in 2025.
| Photo Credit:
RITU RAJ KONWAR

On Thursday, Indian sport lost one of its finest marksmen and mentors as the 2020 Dronacharya awardee breathed his last in a New Delhi hospital following heart-related complications. He was 49. Which is perhaps why my last interaction with him, at a celebratory dinner in Mumbai on February 14, 2025, feels especially precious now.

This was right after he won the Sportstar Aces Coach of the Year award that evening for having guided Manu to the podium in Paris. As I sat by myself, wearily enjoying a tipple, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see Jaspal, with a smile that reached the sharp eyes behind his glasses. “Today’s not a Saturday, but this is exactly how you should spend Saturdays. Lesson learned,” he quipped.

And that is how I will remember Jaspal. Not on a podium, not with a pistol in hand, nor as a voice of authority on the range, but with a reassuring hand on the shoulder, a disarming smile behind oversized spectacles, and one joke that took years to complete its journey.

Published on Jun 12, 2026