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Bindra makes history

An Olympic gold medal is the ultimate achievement in most sporting fields. When Abhinav Bindra made history in Beijing by becoming India’s first-ever individual Olympic gold medal winner, he looked as if he had just another day in the shooting range. The 25-year-old’s decade-old career has been marked by a calmness and composure that belie his age. For those watching the live action from Beijing’s Shooting Range Hall, hopes of an Indian winning any kind of medal (other than in tennis) seemed to rest on a willing suspension of disbelief — until the 10-metre air rifle final was well under way. The bespectacled young man from Chandigarh had placed fourth in the qualification round. The favourite was China’s 23-year-old Zhu Qinan, gold medallist at the Athens Olympics. Shooting is a mind game as much as it is a sport of technical skill. “I am starting to back myself and my beliefs,” Bindra told The Hindu last month. Remaining ice cool in the final, he shot with remarkable consistency, starting with 10.7, averaging 10.45 for ten shoots, not once dropping below 10.0. Going into the final shoot tied for first place with Finland’s Henri Hakkinen and just ahead of Zhu, Bindra brought up one of India’s great sporting moments by scoring a near-perfect 10.8. He revealed after the event how he had shut off the pressure: “I wasn’t trying to make history. I mean I was two points behind at one stage. I was just trying to concentrate. I just wanted to shoot well. I just wanted to shoot aggressively and that’s what I did.” Zhu Qinan, by contrast, confessed that he had been intensely stressed by his desire to win “another gold for my motherland.’

Every four years we go into the Olympics ruminating on the modest prospects of Indian sportspersons. As in 2004, shooting figured high as a possible medal event for a contingent of 56. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore it was who set the trend in 2002 by winning the double trap gold in the Commonwealth Games. Since then there have been successes, including a silver for Rathore at the Athens Olympics in 2004, a world championship title each for Bindra and trap shooter Manavjit Singh Sandhu, and three Asian Games golds for Jaspal Rana. But Olympics looked an impossible peak to conquer. India had only four individual medals to show for its participation, from 1920, in the modern Olympic Summer Games. Every quadrennial review spotlights a lack of priority for sport. Remarkably, shooting has scored breakthroughs at two successive Olympics despite the sport seeming to be handicapped by a lack of ammunition and official import policies. The government should get its due for promoting the sport once it noticed its medal-winning potential. Liberal grants were provided for sending teams abroad and individual shooters, including Bindra and Rathore, were sanctioned substantial funds. There is a positive lesson in this for India’s sports policy.

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