Still on the ascent: Rane is in Paris to incorporate feedback on his jackets and further improve its quality.
| Photo Credit: Emmanual Yogini
Having drawn a blank in Tokyo, there might understandably be a hint of nerves among the Indian shooting contingent ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics, beginning at Chateauroux on July 27. There is one Indian, however, who is supremely confident of his prospects going into the event.
It is Nilesh Rane and Capapie – a Thane-based rifle jacket-making company, he founded 27 years ago and whose products are ubiquitous in elite shooting now.
Throroughly dominant
Regardless of how the Indian team does, the gold medallist at rifle events will most certainly be wearing a jacket, the arm of which bears the trademark Capapie patch of a kneeling rifle-shooter on a green triangle.
According to 44-year-old Rane, the challenge would be to better Capapie’s performance from three years ago. “Shooters wearing Capapie jackets won eight of the 15 medals and four of the five gold medals in rifle events. Shooters wearing our jackets can win every medal in Paris,” he says.
At the Tokyo Olympics, by Rane’s own estimate, some 70 per cent of the rifle shooters were using his jackets. This time, he conservatively guesses, the number is around 90 per cent although Abhinav Bindra – speaking to Sportstar – thinks the number might be even higher.
Using a patented material and custom tailoring provides a massive edge at the elite level. Many feel the rapid rise in rifle scores over the last couple of Olympic cycles is a testament to the obsequiousness of the jacket’s use.
Unlike the kit for most other sports, the shooting jacket is critical to performance, especially in rifle events. Its main function is to support the shooter’s body. “In rifle events, shooters lean away from the target and towards their heels, which is an unnatural position. Jackets were introduced to relieve stress on muscles, tendons, and bones. A jacket that fits properly supports the back and reduces the effort needed to hold that position,” says Heinz Reinkemeier who coached Bindra to a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics.
Knows the lay of the land
Growing up in Mumbai, Rane was always interested in sports. He only took up shooting because his grandfather had a nearly 100-year-old boar-hunting rifle and he had heard that it would be easier to get a license once he became a national shooter. Training under Sanjay Chakravarty, he went on to compete at the national level.
Those were early days of shooting in India and equipment was scarce.
Rane, tired of sharing his shooting jacket, made one for himself. Eventually, other shooters started noticing his kit and asked him if he could make one for them as well.
Rane was a fairly strong shooter but eventually decided to switch full-time to making jackets. “There came a time when people started calling me, not because of my shooting, but because I made good-quality jackets. If someone asked me to make an alteration, I did it,” he says.
Slow start
For all his passion, the going was slow in the initial years. Shooting jackets are a very niche market and all of Rane’s customers were from India. “In 2007, I made a jacket that Abhinav Bindra used to win gold at the 2007 World Championships. I thought it would be the turning point of my career but the next year, Abhinav used a German-made jacket to compete and win a gold at the Olympics,” he says.
Although disappointed, Rane has no regrets. He says Bindra has been a big help over the years and he sees his early years not as a struggle but a time for experimenting with materials and pattern making.
That tinkering finally paid off in 2014 when Rane came up with a material that he would term Capitex, a synthetic-canvas blend that provided far superior stiffness than previous fabrics had while still being flexible enough to pass the ISSF’s standards.
Perhaps, the toughest market to crack was the Chinese. “They were the most reluctant to change. They are extremely particular about what they want but when they saw that everyone else who was using my jackets was doing well, they had no choice. The entire Chinese rifle shooting team switched to Capapie in 2019, just one year before the Olympics and then, they won three gold medals out of five,” he says.
Rane is currently in Chateauroux where he will be speaking to shooters and coaches to try and see how he can further improve his product. “I’m always looking to get better. That’s how you stay in front,” he says.
