A Shot At History: My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold

by Abhinav Bindra

We have to be a little insane to do this, a trifle obsessive, almost as single-minded as shaven monks who sit for years meditating under trees in search of distant nirvana. No joke. I once got yak milk from China because I was told it enhances concentration. (It didn’t.) I attached electrodes to my head to view the activity in my brain when I shot well. I lasered off my love handles. Let’s be clear: we’re not you. We’re not better than you, or other athletes, just caught in lives mostly weirder than most.

Ten times I’d raise my gun to fire, ten times I would put it down, fighting to find the tranquil balance that shooters crave. I didn’t quit and I need to thank somebody for that.

No finer story exists than the one about the Hungarian Karoly Takacs, recounted by David Wallechinsky in his Olympic compendium, The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics. A world-class shooter in the mid-1930s, Takacs injured his right hand in a grenade accident. So he switched to his left hand, practised, and won gold at the 1948 London Olympics. He was thirty-eight. In 1952, at forty-two, he won a second gold.

range wasn’t a place to make friends, it was the site of my mission.

But it is remarkable, maybe even strange and beautiful, how the meaning of victory changes, how the mind digests success over time, how a trophy comes to represent so many things in a single career. Back then, as a young boy just starting, victory was pure, like the innocence of a first kiss. My God, you think, I am something. Later, victory becomes relief, for you

expect yourself to win, you demand it of yourself. But knowing you are good enough to win engulfs you with a different pressure. Finally, victory becomes not irrelevant, not secondary, but just not the greatest pleasure: it is staying faithful through time and tribulation to a process, it is the travel to greatness which is most rewarding.

shot with instructions from Gaby. In Milan and Munich, she was clear: be aggressive, put a score on the board. By the rules I had 105 minutes to fire; in Milan I took 33 minutes, in Munich I took 44. Aggression doesn’t necessarily translate into speed, it means you are focused, it shows intent, it means being brave with your trigger. The moment your sight is aligned, you squeeze, you pull, you react. No waiting for surety, no waiting for a clearer picture, no giving in to hesitancy, just believing it is the right time. But a shooter’s aggressiveness cannot be a conscious act. If he is thinking about it—‘be aggressive, be aggressive’—he might trigger too early, an overreaction born of the voice in his head. Instead this aggression should be instinctive.

Coming fortieth at a World Championships is like a hook to the kidneys, it leaves a bruise. You learn a taste which never goes away, the taste of pride when it is being swallowed. It required introspection but not overreaction. It was defeat but also a tutorial.

Anxiety is horrible, it corrodes the insides, it interrupts and confuses decision-making, it authors a feeling of helplessness. But you can’t fight it, you say ‘come, friend’, you learn to let it sit inside you and shoot well in spite of it. But I am patient. That is my skill. I argued with myself: I had chosen a plan, it hadn’t worked, such is sport. I flushed down the memories of this beautiful town.

first international competition has outskilled you? But in sport, even a novice can offer a lesson and Asif did. And it was this: Finish the job. Stay focused till the last shot. It is always a crucial shot, often a deciding one. Medals tilt on this shot so it comes with a special pressure. I would learn well. Four years later, I would win the World Championship on my final shot. Six years later, I would win the Olympics on my last shot. Now I wasn’t ready. But sometimes you need to lose, painfully, for a weakness to become a strength.

Disappointment visited, but dejection stayed away. I knew I was in the midst of improvement, I knew I had made the correct decision by deciding to refine my technique. Risk would one day find reward. I was willing to meddle, I was willing to sacrifice good form for great form down the road. Patience, patience, patience, I told myself. Only one thing mattered, one day, one year. Athens, 2004.

Sporting self-fulfilment is a lonely journey but it is not one made alone. You need nurturers, confidants, challengers. You need someone to lean on, talk to, be pushed by. You need teachers on technique and mentors to spark confidence.

Champions will produce moments of such sublime skill, so utterly and seemingly oblivious to pressure, that the temptation is to invest them with an otherworldly power. My God, they must be superhuman. But only when they weep at the trophy presentation, their insides revealed, that we are reassured: they are just human beings. So are seemingly robotic shooters like us. But no one knows our humanity better than the people around us.

To get up there was to feel stronger. If I had a choice, I would have taken a cable car up. But it would not have helped me become a better shooter. Uwe taught me, he gave me permission to think, he encouraged it. Such independence is not always recommended in India. Respect is overstated and argument is discouraged by coaches. Athletes are not shown answers but their place.

‘But this is not shooting,’ Uwe would insist. Shooting was a holistic exercise that went beyond mere technique. ‘If your body isn’t working,’ he explained, ‘you cannot execute the skills. You need to be a world-class athlete. If the left leg is pinching, then you can be disturbed.’ Gun, ammunition, stance? Bullshit, he said. If you’re not strong, it won’t matter.

‘It opens your brain,’ Uwe said. A hike, three hours, four hours, five hours, in clean air, pushes the body to its physical limit. You sit on a rock and life is simple, all you want is a drink of water. Nothing else. For him this was satisfaction of the moment, life lived in the present. It was supposed to liberate me from my world, where I was either searching the past for what went wrong, or trying to predict the future.

times I’d sometimes appreciate their value. Honesty matters. Honesty is having people around you willing to say what you don’t want to hear and it’s vital. But honesty without appropriate timing can be counter-productive.

Together they were tilting at excellence, aware that more money only came from more medals.

I lived in a small room at the Olympic Centre, with a bunk bed, table, chair, no bathroom attached, in what was a former air force barracks. In the first year, I did not even have a television. It was not what I was used to, but it was also perfect, almost monkish and humble in its Spartan-ness. It was as plain and neat as my ambition: to be the best shooter alive.

In Beijing I carried around a book whose title I still don’t know. It was my protection from journalists. I just didn’t want to talk. The result was I gained a reputation for being a little impenetrable, giving off an unfriendly, unconcerned air. My friend, the shooter Suma Shirur, once told me, no sarcasm intended, that my ability to cut off was my biggest advantage. I was in a bubble of concentration and I didn’t want to

I like to deconstruct my shooting. But there is no time for this at big events, for before you can even contemplate what

has happened, a microphone is in your face. Why? What happened? Did you choke? Understandably, these were journalists doing their job, but so many questions were absent of any logic and intelligence—sport being broken down into neatly packaged sound bites, which it never can be. Everyone had a reason for my defeat, a theory. Some insisted the pressure had tilted my hand. I didn’t agree. Some believed I had burnt all my energy in the qualification. I wasn’t sure. Coach Thomas told the media that since I battled through qualification, with many of the shots just a 10.0, I was simply ‘lucky’ to get into the final. I didn’t agree. You don’t get ‘lucky’ in shooting. You don’t hit a target by fluke, like a shot off the net cord. Some argued my parents had distracted me. I didn’t agree. My parents can be present at an event, but I’m locked into another universe of focus. Anyway, their faith in me shakes me, moves me, it never pressures me. Divya, who wept for days but never in front of me, said it was not meant to be, and was a warrior. When a journalist tossed a snide remark at me after my dope test—‘very bad

performance’—she defended me furiously: ‘How many Indians come so far? You have no idea how hard he worked.’ The morning after my failure, I went to watch Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore at the trap range because I felt he had the best chance of a medal He was inspiring, winning the silver, breaking the spell of bronze that went back to wrestler K. D. Jadhav in 1952, tennis ace Leander Paes in 1996 and weightlifter Karnam Malleswari in 2000. At his press conference, Rathore, responding to a query, said I would be a world champion one day. And Sharda Ugra, the fine writer who was then with India Today, was forceful in telling me my time would come, my gold would arrive. Later, some gentle volunteers tried putting the day ...

‘You are seventh in the Olympics. That ...

It is a beautiful thing to have people be gentle to you, to believe in you. I needed it because when I went back to India, the stories were all negative. Just another Indian who had buckled, just the same old story. You get branded, put in a box, and that’s it. I was burning inside, with anger, with disbelief, with the ignorance of some of the views. But I had to shut up. You lose, y...

Well… many coaches would argue or even reason: “… too nervous” “…too stupid…” “ … too cramped” “… wanting too much”

The excellence of performance is based on “automatic body function” (execution of technical skills) and the skill and ability to gain mental control over the outcome of one’s specific and final action!

The separation between winning and not-winning is infinitesimal and now I knew at least that exhaustion could be fended off, I wouldn’t fade. I worked to the point where I believed no one was training like me. From my physical state I was gaining a psychological advantage.

Halfway up, I said, no, enough, I can’t. Fear had me by the throat, nerves had me by the collar. I yelled ‘down’, the crowd insisted ‘up, up’. The legs freeze, the mind quits. To just put one foot onto a higher rung, to lift, to pull, each step taking me further away from the ground that is our comfort zone, requires an enormous leap of

why are people

was like some grand wizard of the gold. Sweat and desire is never a sexy answer, but eventually, if you distil greatness, often this is what it is.