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She looks — as the clich goes — like the girl next door. And it's a safe bet you wouldn't guess that slender 24-year-old Heena Sidhu, with her totally casual manner, is the world's No. 1 pistol shooter.

For Sidhu, the world title came, thanks to a little help from Lady Luck. She wasn't scheduled to take part in the World Cup at Munich last November, but the three contestants from other countries who were slated to travel to Germany all backed out one after another. And once Sidhu had the title in her sights, she didn't let her gaze falter for a second.

She shot to the top of the world rankings in March after clinching gold at the Asian Air Gun Championship in Kuwait and following that up with a silver medal at the ISSF Rifle/Pistol World Cup in Fort Benning in the US.

'It's all been like a dream. Everything's happened so fast, the feeling of winning is yet to sink in!' says Sidhu.

The young shooter's smart enough to know that in the brutally competitive world of sport it's the last medal that counts. 'You are always a student, never a master. After all, you're as good as your last performance,' says the 24-year- old, as she struggles through a physiotherapy session to get rid of a nagging wrist pain. 'I will be leaving for the Commonwealth Games in a few days, so I'm hoping to get rid of the pain soon,' she adds.

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  Heena Sidhu holds the Asian Air Gun Championship trophy she won in Kuwait in March and her husband, Ronak Pandit, flourishes the World Cup she brought home from Munich last November

For Sidhu, shooting has always been a way of life. She had an uncle who was a gunsmith and was very used to firearms. 'I fired my first shot when I was just five,' she chuckles. 'One day I asked my uncle to let me to pull the trigger once. I guess I always knew what I wanted to be,' she adds.

But she has never neglected her books even when she was practising for hours on end at the shooting range. And there were even times when she would study for 14 hours at a stretch and then get out her guns.

The result is that today she is definitely a rarity — a world champion shooter who's also a qualified dentist. She has, however, given up on dentistry and says she will never return to it. 'I will never practice dentistry because you can get an umpteen number of dentists, but not too many good shooters,' she says.

Astonishingly, she kept up with her studies even when she was deeply involved in competitive shooting. 'I was a nerd to the point where I would take my medical books along whenever I was travelling for tournaments since shooting was my first love,' laughs Sidhu. Once she went to almost absurd lengths to keep abreast of her dentistry. She says: 'Once I took along a human skull on a flight to study for the anatomy exam. I still can't believe that the airline allowed it.'

In the world of shooting there have been two men in Sidhu's life. One is younger brother Karanbir, who is also a national-level shooter himself and who has been by sister Sidhu's side at many of her triumphs.

'Initially, she was low on self-confidence,' says Karanbir. 'She would take her wins as a fluke and was always afraid of going to the trials alone. But today, my sister's No.1 in the world!'

As a youngster, Sidhu tried various sports, including swimming and tennis, but they didn't fire her imagination. It was only in 2006 that she took up shooting and knew she had found her calling.

Her father Rajbir Sidhu quickly realised this and built a makeshift shooting range along the driveway of their Patiala home. Around the same time she was also writing the entrance examinations for medical studies. So Heena would study all day and would shoot through the night.

She quickly made a name for herself and won her first international bronze at the Asian Shooting Championships in the junior 10m air pistol barely a year after she became a shooter. Then, in 2009, she won a silver medal at the World Cup in Beijing — a first for an Indian woman pistol shooter. 'I wasn't interested in the junior matches. But I always wanted to compete with the world's best shooters,' she says.

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  Sidhu takes aim during the 10m air pistol women’s competition at the World Cup Final 2013 in Munich

Her quest for global-level excellence led her to Anatoly Piddubnyl — a former USSR chief coach.

As luck would have it, Piddubnyl already had India in his sights. He was finally invited to India in 2009 to train international shooter Ronak Pandit, who later became Heena's husband.

Pandit was to eventually become the second key man in Heena's career. But in the tradition of legendary love stories, their relationship began on a rocky note. Says Pandit: 'We used to hate each other with a vengeance.'

At the time he and Sidhu were both practising under Piddubnyl. Says Pandit: 'I was an established shooter and she was the new kid on the block. But she wouldn't listen to me when I offered advice. It was so annoying.'

But gradually, they became closer. 'I later realised that she is a fighter and is just as aggressive in pursuing her goals as I am,' says Pandit.

Sometime later Pandit turned the focus away from his own career and became her coach. 'At times things used to turn really ugly. I would treat her as a student, but Heena was not used to handling authority, so there would be fights and our relationship reached a breaking point. But somehow we managed to survive.'

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  Sidhu focusing on her fitness in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics

Sidhu believes that having your life partner as your coach has a positive side. 'He motivates me like no one else can. I remember during the World Cup in the US, I had to take 10 shots in under eight minutes which was really difficult. I was about to panic, but after talking to Ronak for a minute I got all the shots and also won silver.'

In January 2103, after being together for three years, the couple decided to get married. 'I used to live in Patiala while he is from Mumbai. I never wanted to get married early in life, but when you know the one you want to marry, why delay it any further?' says Sidhu shrugging.

However, her career on the shooting range has not always been a smooth one. In recent years her critics had written her off saying she lacked the final finishing touch. At the Commonwealth Games 2010 she lost gold by a mere 0.3 points. Her performance at the Asian Games in Doha 2012, which was a qualification event for the 2012 Olympics, wasn't good enough for her to make the cut. And at the World Cup in Changwon (South Korea) last year, she again missed the mark in the final and finished a lowly eighth.

'Although Heena was not winning big medals, she was close to the top and broke into the world Top 15,' says Pandit. 'This gave the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) the confidence to pick her for the 2012 London Olympics over Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who had won the silver at the 2004 Athens Olympics.'

Sidhu finished 12th at the Olympics, but, by this time, the government also turned tight-fisted and only released money to meet her expenses after a great deal of tussling. 'I had to shell out Rs 8 lakh to Rs 10 lakh from my own pocket. Also, I was wasting too much time on paperwork and was not getting proper attention in terms of physical and mental fitness. That's when we realised the need to have a team in place,' she says.

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  Sidhu (left) and Pandit face the camera at the Central Park during their holiday in New York to celebrate her victory in the shooting World Cup 2014 in the US

After her poor showing in London, the duo realised the need for a team of professionals — a technical coach, a physiotherapist, Pandit as her performance coach and a sports psychologist — who would work with her full-time.

And the backing for this team came from Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ), which supports Indian sportspersons. 'It costs us Rs 7 lakh to Rs 8 lakh a month to keep the team, which is taken care of partly by the OGQ and the government,' says 29-year-old Pandit.

Sidhu now trains for about five hours a day and a typical day includes three hours of technical training, an hour of mental training and then one-and-a-half hours of physical training.

'A world-class athlete always has a very efficient team working for him/her and we don't mind investing in a world-class team for our athletes,' says Viren Rasquinha, CEO, OGQ. 'We don't judge an athlete by his or her achievements, but rather gauge a person's potential. Heena has exceptional talent. We watched her closely at the London Olympics and thought that she had the potential to be a star.'

Pandit by this time had decided it was time to sacrifice his own career as a shooter and focus totally on Sidhu. 'I knew that I should be ready to make the sacrifice because not both of us can do well simultaneously,' says Pandit.

Next up for Sidhu is the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in July. But she isn't thinking about what might happen there. She says firmly: 'I don't think about winning gold. I just want to keep moving on and do my best in each tournament.' u