In general, Sports persons are fit and active for a longer
span .. .. BUT once a while we hear and
grieve personalities dying younger !!
and one such is that of Jaspal Rana at 49 !
Jaspal Rana, the Asian Games gold medallist shooter who later guided Manu Bhaker to her historic double bronze-medal feat at the Paris Olympics as a coach, has died. He was only 49.
He won an Asian Games gold in 1994, and over the next decade, his cabinet would be brimming with medals. He couldn’t win an Olympic medal because his pet event, centre-fire pistol, wasn’t in the Olympics. In the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Rana achieved a major milestone, winning three gold medals and a silver as a 30-year-old shooter competing in his fourth Asian Games, wherein he equaled the world record in 25 m Center Fire Pistol with 590 points.
Jaspal Rana (1976 –2026) won numerous medals in Shooting at international competitions, including the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games, and had been instrumental in shaping India's presence in shooting sports. He remains India’s most successful athlete in Commonwealth Games history, with a remarkable tally of 15 medals—9 gold, 4 silver, and 2 bronze—won across four editions of the Games: 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006. He was awarded the Arjuna Award in 1994 and Padma Shri in 1997 for his contributions to Indian shooting. Beyond his competitive career, he was also known for mentoring young shooters and contributing to the growth of shooting in India, for which he was awarded the Dronacharya Award in 2020. Rana had been credited with helping Manu Bhaker win double bronze medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Shooting is an interesting sport and in the London Olympics 2012 , 11 Indian shooters qualified - Seven male and four female. Vijay Kumar did the Nation proud by winning Silver and Gagan Narang silver. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Abhinav Singh Bindra became the first Indian to win an individual gold medal at the Olympic Games. Earlier, at Athens in 2004, Colonel Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore won Silver. Thus making the Sports more popular and widely followed in India.
In 2012, Jaspal Rana
was appointed chief coach for junior pistol shooters by the National Rifle
Association of India (NRAI). It was
announced by NRAI advisor at that time that Rana will be entitled to get a monthly salary
of INR 50,000, with the other coaches getting INR 30,000. Sethi was quoted as saying that "We are
confident that Jaspal, with his experience, can help the junior shooters to
take the next step. He has a great track record and should come in
handy."
The amount is no big when compared to what is gotten in IPL yet Rana made it big as a coach in Shooting. Since 2018, pistol coach Jaspal Rana has been coaching Olympic medalist Manu Bhaker, though Bhaker and Rana briefly parted ways in 2021, but re-united in 2023 to prepare for the 2024 Olympics. Rana also coached at the Jaspal Rana Institute of Education and Technology in Dehradun.
Jaspal Rana was born in 1976 in a Garhwali family in Uttarakhand. His father Narayan Singh Rana is a 1971 war veteran who served in Indo-Tibetan Border Police and later became the first sports minister of Uttarakhand in 2000. Jaspal has two siblings Sushma Singh (Rana) and Subhash Rana; both his siblings are also accomplished shooters.
At just 18 years old,
Rana was honored with the Arjuna Award in 1994, India's second-highest sporting
accolade, acknowledging his early achievements in shooting. By the age of 21, he was conferred the Padma
Shri in 1997, India's fourth-highest civilian award, for his exceptional
contributions to sports. Recognized for his excellence in coaching, Rana
received the Dronacharya Award in 2020, India's highest honor for sports
coaching. Notably, he was awarded in the
same year that his protégés, Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary, received the
Arjuna Award.
13.6.2026
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