pride of india
M.S. Unnikrishnan

AT long last Indian sport has a truly golden boy. Abhinav Bindra’s Gold in the 10-metre air rifle event in the Beijing Olympic Games is an unparalleled achievement recorded by any Indian sportsman.

It’s not that Viswanathan Anand’s World Chess crown, Kapil Dev’s Prudential World Cup ODI triumph, Prakash Padukone and Pullella Gopichand’s All-England Badminton trophies, and the Grand Slam wins of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi, were lesser in their time. But by winning a Gold medal in the Olympics, this 25-year-old from Chandigarh has filled a void that a billion Indians had been waiting for. And, he did it in style. With clinical precision Abhinav held his nerve and kept his poise and composure to hit the bull’s eye on the world’s grandest stage. He lived up to his nickname, ‘The Monk’, by keeping his emotions under check even on the threshold of glory. "Papa, mission accomplished", he informed his father Dr A. S. Bindra on phone after his historic feat.

Even when he was sure of a medal, Abhinav’s thoughts — and eye — were only on his target. "I did not think too much about winning a medal. I was keen on getting my shots right. I worked hard and tried not to commit mistakes," Abhinav later shared the thoughts that played in his mind during those tense final moments.

"He’s a silent killer," exulted Dr Bindra. His dispassionate nature makes him quite detached to all the pomp and show around him. He often thinks of even quitting the sport. "I have won the World Cup and the Olympic Gold, now I want to quit," he told national coach Prof Sunny Thomas moments after getting the Olympic gold.

"He has a cool temperament and weathers pressure easily", observed Professor Thomas.

Abhinav’s potential was evident in the ISS World Championship on July 24, 2006, at Zagreb (Croatia) when he not only bagged the gold medal, but also booked a berth for Beijing. This was the first gold medal won by an Indian in the World Championship and Abhinav bested the 1962 silver-medal winning performance of Karni Singh.

Sitting in his Defence Colony bungalow in New Delhi after his European sojourn, Abhinav had said, during a chat with this correspondent, that his ultimate aim was a gold in the Olympics. Though he missed — by just one point — qualifying for the final of Sydney Olympics in 2000, where he made his debut as the youngest Indian Olympian at 17, and he also faltered in the title round of the 2004 Athens Games, finishing seventh, despite creating an Olympic record. But Abhinav had made up his mind that he would settle for nothing less than a gold in Beijing. His e-mail ID was "goforgold".

Ironically, in the pre-Olympic hype, it was not Abhinav, but Gagan Narang who was touted as India’s medal hope in the 10-metre event, especially after he won a bronze at the Olympic venue two months ago.

In the final reckoning, Gagan finished ninth while Abhinav mounted the podium.

Anyway you look at it, Abhinav’s triumph is matchless as he competed with the best in the world, and came up trumps in a heart-stopping contest. He weathered the challenge by defending champion and Olympic record-holder Zhu Qinan of China and Henri Haikkinen of Finland, to see the Indian National Flag flutter and hear the National Anthem during the Olympic competitions.

On target

Abhinav’s golden achievement is, in fact, the climax of his resilience and perseverance. Only somebody with steely determination can stick to a sport like shooting in a country that lives and breathes cricket.

Seven hours’ practice and two hours of stretching and jogging everyday kept Abhinav trim and agile enough to stay focussed. He even sacrificed regular college to practice shooting. Despite scoring 86 per cent in his Class XII exams he opted for a distance education course to secure an MBA from the USA. "Abhinav never wavered in his concentration while shooting for hours on end," noted his first coach and a former shooter Col Joginder Singh Dhillon.

The road to glory had its rough patches. In 2006 he was dogged by a debilitating spinal injury that forced him to miss the 2006 Asian Games at Doha (Qatar). He had then thought of quitting shooting forever. His minus four vision, too, did not seem to help.

But egged on by his doting father Dr A.S. Bindra and well wishers, Abhinav took up the gun and trained hard for several months in Germany with his Swiss coach Gaby Buehlmann before going to Beijing.

In one stroke he has silenced his critics who had been singing that awards and rewards came to him on a platter, a little too.

Perhaps, the critics were right, because when Abhinav was given the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 2001, the country’s highest sporting honour, he was the youngest sportsperson to receive the award, and he was yet to win a big medal.

Fighting odds

Surely, Abhinav could not have hit the Olympic Gold but for the unflinching support that he received from his father Dr A.S.Bindra, the Sports Authority of India, the Sports Ministry, the National Rifle Association of India, the Indian Olympic Association and legions of well wishers.

Within hours of winning the medal, he was promised over Rs 3 crore by various state governments and others. Yet, there was a phase in his career when Abhinav could not progress without outside financial support (and expert coaching), though he was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth.

"I have exhausted all my savings," Dr Bindra had lamented after Abhinav returned from the European rifle shooting circuit with six gold, four silver and two bronze medals in 2001. There he was also adjudged as the "overall European champion and the first shooter ever to have bagged so many medals in one circuit". The European circuit had helped Abhinav establish himself as a shooter of world calibre and high potential, and this boosted his confidence to dream of an Olympic medal.

On learning about Abhinav’s predicament, the then Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports Uma Bharti circumvented red tape to provide the maximum possible assistance to the shooter. His foremost demand was a foreign coach and these coaches come with a big price tag. And the coach Abhinav wanted to engage was even more pricey. Renkel Meir of Germany, one of the best shooting coaches in the world, charged $400 a day, which even the super-rich Dr Bindra found much beyond his means. The government rules permitted only up to $190 per day to a foreign coach.

But still, the government did fork out Rs 35 lakh for Abhinav’s coach and his training in India and abroad aprt from giving Rs 60 lakh over five years for his training. The Bindras had always aimed high and did not chicken out when the going got tough. never deprived him of anything. I provided him with the latest equipment available in the world, and all other facilities, but it was an uphill task," Dr Bindra had said.

Now, Walther — the 103-year-old German company, which is the top rifle manufacturers in the world, is sponsoring all his equipment. Walther, used by James Bond, costs upward of Rs 2 lakh per piece. Abhinav has seven of these guns now. Abhinav was also lucky that his father could afford to build him indoor, air-conditioned shooting ranges at Chandigarh and at their farmhouse on a seven-acre plot on the Patiala road. Shooting is an expensive sport, and only the very rich and influential can afford it. Now that Abhinav has set the benchmark, India’s obsession with cricket may begin to end and there might be more interest in and funds for other sports. Abhinav Bindra may well have opened the floodgates.