How Dhoni's reel life inspired Olympics bronze-winner Kusale

Bengaluru: There’s a fine line between a sustained feeling of despondency after losing something you have worked for all your life and depression. 

Swapnil Kusale might be on the other end of the spectrum now with an Olympic bronze medal from Paris to show for, but he had one foot on either side of that line a year ago.

In the aftermath of finishing fourth after one poor shot at the 2023 Asian Games, Kusale assumed it was despondency and went about his days with an uncomfortable tightness in his chest: more shooting, more training, more of all the same things he did before that event. 

But this feeling wouldn’t leave him, eventually prompting him to seek professional help.

“Something happened after that loss (Asian Games) because I had finished fourth the same way at the World Championships not long ago,” says Kusale, who booked his Paris Olympic quota at those very World Championships. 

“I went into a strange place and I couldn’t get my head out of it. I was depressed all the time and then you begin to ask if you’re worth it, if what you are pursuing is worth it, if you’re not meant for this pursuit. I was feeling terrible. I just wanted to go far away and sit in a quiet place and not think for a while.”

“Luckily, around that time I found a psychologist, and once I had funds to approach her, I started going more regularly and I found my way back from that dark space. We realised that I was bottling up a lot of my emotions because I am an introvert, and because of how I was raised.”

Suresh Kusale, Swapnil’s father, delves into how of Swapnil was raised, but you get a sense that there is still some emotional distance between them. After all, Swapnil moved out of the house in Kolhapur district’s Kambalwadi to the Krida Prabodhini centre in Pune - a school sports programme of the Maharashtra government - as a young child. 

“He was a great kid, he worked very hard but he kept to himself and he has always been very God-fearing,” says Suresh. “What else do I say? He’s just a regular boy, but he makes us very proud. He makes this country proud and I am sure he has a lot more to do in the future.”

Swapnil seems to have that blue-collar mindset because when asked if the feeling of winning a bronze has sunk in yet, he responds with a nonchalant “I am normal!” before jumping to the most used adage in the conversation: “The dream is not done”. Swapnil has reiterated numerous times already that a gold medal at the Olympics is his pursuit.  

“I know this is just the beginning. I have worked hard to get here, and I have gotten here because of the support of a lot of my people,” he says. “It’s funny too because I took up shooting because it felt like a nice hobby. When I was growing up, a lot of people used to tell me I have OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and it made sense to me because I would always want everything in place and everything in the same order, always.

“Oddly enough, you need to have that sort of repetitiveness in shooting, so I guess it worked out,” he laughs. 

While OCDs held him in good stead, Swapnil’s tendency to stay with an emotion was posing a problem. That's why Deepali Deshpande, a former National champion and Swapnil’s coach for the longest time, was worried about how he would fare in men's 50 metre rifle three positions final. 

“The problem with him is that when he would feel something, it would stay with him for a long time,” she says. “The only way to be successful in shooting is to remain without emotion for lengthy periods. You can’t be too happy and let that affect you or be too sad and let that affect you. Shooting is all about self-control. 

“What would happen with him is that if he would get happy, he would tend to ignore a few things and make mistakes. If he was sad after a performance or if he read something negative, he would hold onto that for a long time. Luckily, he didn’t do that on that day.”

What he did instead, besides going through a routine of mantras he picked up at home as a kid, was recall a scene from his favourite movie. 

“You know that scene from the MS Dhoni movie, the one where he sits at the train station and ponders life. He can either remain a ticket collector or he can follow his dreams as a cricketer,” says Kusale, a former TC himself. 

“I have always related to that scene and Mahi because we both were TCs. He had a dream despite being from a small town and he made it. I have a dream, I am from a small town, and I am on my way to making it. I am sure about that.”