Abhinav Bindra
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India’s first individual Olympic gold
August 12, 2008 From the archives of “The Times of India” Alok Sinha | TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Golden Eye, or The Man With The Golden Gun. 26-year-old Abhinav Bindra of Chandigarh hit bullseye in Beijing, giving us our first-ever individual Olympic gold. Boom Boom Bindra’s fired up a nation’s imagination and given Indian sport a desperately needed shot in the arm
The final shot from Abhinav Bindra’s rifle may not have been heard outside the packed hall in the Beijing Shooting Range Complex. But its bang was loud enough to lift the spirits of a billion-plus Indians back home. No individual gold has mattered so much to so many people in the history of Olympics.
It was a medal for Abhinav; it was redemption for India. Never again will anyone be able to point a smug, sardonic finger and say: ‘‘No Indian is good enough to win an individual Olympic gold.’’
Hockey’s eight gold medals notwithstanding, the last coming 28 years ago, this is the first time that an Indian has won an individual gold since modern Olympics started in 1896. There is no greater joy than listening to the sound of the national anthem on the world’s biggest stage.
The joy was also spurred by the improbable nature of the triumph. The script of the men’s 10m air rifle final might have been penned by Alfred Hitchcock himself. Bindra, who qualified for the final with the fourth-best score of 596, looked calm and assured when the call for the first shot came. The first shot — 10.7. He started with a bang and that set the tone for the 10-shot final. He followed it up with a 10.3. After the third shot, a 10.4, he had moved from No. 3 to No. 2. Then, Bindra slowly ate into the lead of Finland’s Henri Hakkinen and went ahead after the 7th shot with 10.6.
This is the fifth individual Olympic medal for India. Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav won the first, a bronze in wrestling at the Helsinki Games in 1952. After a long gap, Leander Paes won the tennis bronze in Atlanta Games in 1996.
Then, Karnam Malleswari won a weightlifting bronze in 2000 in Sydney and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore raised the bar, winning a silver in Athens in 2004.
Comeback
FOR A YEAR, HE COULDN’T LIFT A RIFLE
Aritra Mukhopadhyay | TNN
FROM THE ARCHIVES OF ‘‘THE TIMES OF INDIA’’: 2008
Chandigarh:Even as a kid, Abhinav Bindra’s buddies say, he was different. The boy was reticent, but not unfriendly. No one could quite put a finger on him. He seemed to have a secret core that nobody could reach out to. And as the bespectacled boy (with minus 4 power in both eyes) took to the shooting range, there was a steely determination that even his closest friends couldn’t fathom.
This last attribute was perhaps what pulled Abhinav back from the brink. Since 2006, he had been down and out for months with a career-threatening spinal injury caused due to ligament overstretching in the lumbodorsal region.
All those months, Abhinav could barely pick up his 5kg rifle, let alone shoot with it. ‘‘Less than perfect shooting technique, lack of trained doctors and micronutrient deficiency can result in some of the common shooting sports injuries,’’ says Dr Amit Bhattacharjee, who accompanied Bindra to Zagreb and Beijing.
So bad was the injury that many were writing him off after he dropped out of the Doha Asian Games in December 2006. But Abhinav wasn’t one to give up. He was diligent in his physiotherapy. He took up a thorough rehabilitation programme that helped reduce the strain on his spine and made some technical changes for a better posture.
So, while the world had lost its focus on Abhinav, the shooter himself was completely focused on his recovery. And training. First at his private airconditioned shooting range, and then, in Germany under coach Gaby. The champion was quietly waiting for his moment — with patience and determination.
