Well I am talking neither about Amitabh Bachchan nor his son Abhishek Bachchan. I am talking here about Abhinav Bindra who has just created history by winning the first ever individual gold medal at the Olympics for India in the 10m Air rifle event. Yes you heard it correctly, its the first ever individual gold medal won by an Indian at the Olympics. We have had four Olympic individual medallist before this remarkable feat - Khashaba Jadav (Bronze-1952), Leander Paes (Bronze-1996), Karnam Malleshwari (Bronze-2000) and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore (Silver-2004).
We are proud of all of them but Abhinav's calm composure has inspired me. I first heard about him from my friend Abhimanyu in junior college. He said Abhinav & I are from the same school and he is an upcoming world champion. So everytime there is a shooting event, I search for his name in the news just to see whats he upto these days. But this feat of his changed all that. I wont lie but this is the first time I actually found out how the point scoring system works in this event. Initially before qualifying for the final 10 shots, the bullseye gets you a perfect 10 and you need to shoot 60 shots in 105 minutes. The top 8 sportsmen then slug it out in the final 10 shots where the bullseye get you 10.9 points. The cumulative highest points earner is the winner. The mark of the champion was evident when before the last shot, both Henri Hakkinen and Abhinav Bindra, were tied and Henri shot a poor 9.7. Now imagine, you are on the verge of creating history and the immense pressure which goes with it, and you come up with not only your best shot of the event but the best shot of the entire event. Yes Abhinav did that, he shot a brilliant 10.8 on his way to clinching the gold medal with the total tally of 700.5. Mind you the bullseye earns you 10.9 and Abhinav able to shoot and earn 10.8, I cant even imagine the pressure he must be in.
Kudos to Abhinav and keep on winning medals and hearts.
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