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Indian Athlete Abhinav Bindra – gold medalist for 10m Air Rifle

India’s first gold medalist shooter Abhinav Bindra proves himself that he deserves to rank among those gold winner athletes from China and the United States who are dominantly garnering the gold Olympic medals. August 11, 2008, the third day of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was a memorable day for Bindra because of his gold medal win for the Men’s 10m Air Rifle, being on his best during the final round, and got a total score of 700.5.

Following Bindra on silver was the former gold medalist at the 2004 Olympics in Athens Greece, Zhu Qinan from China, with a total score of 699.7. Next in bronze was the Finnish athlete Henri Hakkinen, who was leading at first, but after the qualification round, he already cannot prevent Bindra and Zhu from winning and finally making it to the finals. Hakkinen made a total score of 699.4. It was really a close fight among the three athletes, as you can see with their scores it was just a few points away form each other.

During the qualification round, Hakkinen leads the competition with a score 598, followed by Zhu Qinan with 597, and Bindra followed as the third placer with a score of 596 points. However, Bindra starting to prove himself with his first shot with a score of 10.7 followed by some more others without a score of below 10. As the game continues and they are now a few steps for the final, Bindra and Hakkinen are on a tie position, which is later got by Bindra after showing off his best.

Going on to Bindra’s bios, this gold medalist from India was from Zirakpur Mohali, Punjab in India. Part of his early childhood, Abhinav was a member of an wealthy Sikh family. To prove that statement, Bindra’s parents Dr. Apjit and Babli Bindra, are promoters of the Hitech Group of companies, with a turnover of Rs 300 crores or $75 million, with interests in agro and dog food processing, computer gaming, livestock genetics, and pharmaceuticals. Because of all this wealth, Brindas parents was able to sent him to Don school, Dehradun and after that to St. Stephens School, Chandigarh, and later earned his BBA from the University of Colorado.
Talking about his shooting career, Bindra’s was first spotted by his first coach Lt. Col. J.S. Dhillon. However, right now, his current coach is Gabriela Buhlmann from Basel Switzerland and trained him in Germany before the Olympics starts.

Before playing for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Bindra already had won six medals for various international meets in 2001. It was in 2002 that he won Gold in the Pairs event at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games, and he won silver for the individual event. During the 2004 Olympics, Bindra scored 597 in the qualification round, wherein he was the third placer behind Qinan Zhu who scored 599 and Li Jie at 598. During the finals he finished with 97.6 points. He was then last of eight fields and was the only player below 100 points.

Bindra also won Gold in the Pairs events, and bronze at the singles event at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, and he missed the 2006 Asian Games at Doha due to his back injury. And now, he is lucky enough to be one of the Gold medalists at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.