At 33, Abhinav Bindra will be competing in his fifth Olympics. He has decided that it will be his last Olympics as a competitor.
For one who aimed only at Olympic gold and won it in 2008, it has been a revelation that he could continue for eight more years. It is the love of the sport, not the results, that has driven him this far.
Starting as the youngest shooter in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where he missed the final by one point with a score of 590, to enduring a heart-break owing to a “bouncy wooden floor” that robbed him of a medal at Athens in 2004, when he was probably at his best, to being detached about the result and conquering the shock of a disastrous ‘sighter’ before the final in Beijing that led to the triumph, Bindra has seen it all.
London 2012 had looked an afterthought as Bindra took the challenge forward to rise again after reaching the zenith.
“It would have been easy for me to leave on a high,” said Bindra, who thrives on the challenge and did not take the option of an easy passage into oblivion.
In 2014, Bindra won his maiden Commonwealth Games individual gold in Glasgow and the first individual bronze at the Incheon Asian Games. At every step, Bindra announced in advance that it was his last entry in those Games, the way he has done now before the Olympics.
Was he not putting pressure on himself and possibly trying to intensify his focus towards peak performance. For, nobody knows how to tap pressure to advantage than Bindra. “Not really,” he says, as a matter of fact.
The challenges have been manifold in recent times, but Bindra has fought through them to step onto the biggest sporting stage one last time and possibly deliver his best.
“There have been several challenges and I could have very easily given up. I am so proud of the fact that I have fought through hopeless situations to come to a point where I feel good,” he said from Germany, unmindful of the toughest and crucial phase of preparation.
Bindra, who has done his bit for the Olympic movement in the country, feels that the best is on its way!
