A Shot At History: My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold

by Abhinav Bindra

They weren’t going to the Olympics carrying awe and content just to try, they were going to the Olympics to succeed, make history, be remembered.

I was so in love with my shooting, so certain of its greatness, that I fell for sports’ oldest trick. The lure of overconfidence.

Roger Federer as a boy would sit under the umpire’s chair and weep for half an hour.

being broken down into neatly packaged sound bites, which it never can

My redemption would not arrive here, for this was to become Samaresh Jung’s personal Games, his haul so wonderfully rich (five golds, one silver, one bronze) that he could have been No. 12 on the international medal table himself.

If we concentrated our attention as strongly on our athletes as we did on the vapid 10-minute Bollywood dance segment at the Melbourne closing ceremony, we might have actually risen on the total medal table.

Sport, and this is its particular beauty and cruelty all at once, has no memory. Yesterday matters for it gives you confidence and yet yesterday is irrelevant.

This can be a problem, the fact that you can walk away any time can make you soft.

They cannot, sometimes literally, afford to fail. I could.

when you had everything in life, you needed that extra challenge to ‘go for it’.

if you retreat, you will not forget this day because you will be a coward; if you continue, you will not forget this day because you have proved that you are your own hero.

Now I had won India’s first individual Olympic gold with the highest score ever in an Olympic final. Dear God.

And this is shooting, dudes, not a World Cup-winning goal scored with a bicycle kick in the 89th minute.

Next day, the ambassador kindly brought me letters from dignitaries. The president was pleased, the prime minister was happy. Because of me? It was overwhelming. In a quiet moment, I flew back through time, wondering why it had taken so long for an Indian to win gold and hoping it would not take as long for another. Then I opened my phone. Six hundred missed calls. I was famous.

went through the pain to get it, I won it, experienced it, felt the journey. The medal is for the moment, reward for two hours of shooting. But for the athlete it’s not the moment of victory that matters, for it’s taken him more than two hours.

was a lovely moment, but not the best moment. That was when the postman lugged sacks of mail into my Chandigarh home every day.

Cricketers constantly feel the connection between athlete and nation, between success and worship: they taste it daily, in airport departure halls, hotel lobbies, restaurants, parties, fields. Even when they lock out the world, it’s hard not to hear the murmur of a nation praying.

It forced me to peel off a layer of my insularity and become more interactive; it reminded me, a person not instinctively given to displays of emotion, to turn into a more welcoming man.

Winning is complicated, not just the art of it but the accepting of it.

Heinz described winning ‘as a big crisis, a real disaster’, for he appreciated both the neurotic quality of the shooter and the dilemmas of a mission accomplished.

Like sitting in the movies trying to look at your own film and not knowing the script…

At twenty-five, people are starting their lives, I was done.

It is why athletes in India are so focused on finding a job, it’s their security, the one guarantee in a sporting life that offers none.

Sweat and desire is never a sexy answer, but eventually, if you distil greatness, often this is what it is.

how do you walk away from a talent? How do you reject a skill? Especially since it is the only skill you know.

The TV story was disappointing yet almost predictable, for much of television journalism in India is nothing but an excitable dance with facts.

We shoot at targets, not at each other. We see bullseyes, not each other’s faces.

But I had in my phone a text message from Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore that I cherish: ‘The world will keep asking for more proof of your skills, but you just have to play for yourself.’

The irony of sport in our country is that officials don’t assist, they hinder.

But it is how you are questioned, it is the identity of the questioners sometimes, that I objected to. The tone is patronizing, the manner feudal, the

was bloody lucky anyway that my dad could support me, but what about athletes who had no backing, no families who could afford guns and equipment?

Of fifty shooters at an Olympics, one wins, but the others don’t necessary fail. How do you convince officials of this?

At the 2002 World Championships in Lahti, Finland, overburdened with coaches who wanted single rooms, the athletes had to share.

shameful.Walking out in front of the world at an Olympics in shabby uniforms is embarrassing.

Chasing a medal isn’t a dreary task of shuffled papers, it is an adventure and a commitment.The

Medals look pretty around the neck, but you can’t eat them.

athletes.They wake up probably earlier than you, they run, sweat, lift every day. You are not their focus, but in a way they run, sweat, lift for

The spectator is a suddenly interested student of body language, he wants reaction, you don’t want to give him any. It’s

This is the unseen world of the athlete, this only athletes understand.

They warrant respect because winning is fine, but it is an outcome, it is the pursuit of it that is fascinating.