‘Thousand ways to Rome’
India’s first and only individual Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra’s recount of his journey till date

By Shubhdarshani Mitra
He was introduced to the shooting sport at the age of 13, was a member of the Indian Commonwealth Games team at the age of 15, competed for his first Olympic games when he was 17, broke the world record before he was 20 and won an individual gold medal at the Beijing Olympic Games at the age of 26 — ace shooter Abhinav Bindra has always believed in aiming high! At a talk organised by the Young FICCI Ladies Organisation (YFLO) in New Delhi in mid-November, Bindra spoke at length about his Olympic journey and the intense training that has gone behind those medals. Though training was more of a fun for him, he admits. “I really enjoyed training hard. For me training is a lot of fun,” he said. He would turn up at the shooting range even when he got a day off. “Yeah, because I had nothing better to do,” Bindra told Sonali Chander, sports editor, NDTV 24x7 and the moderator for the talk.

It was a Monday afternoon, Aug 11, 2008, when he won the individual gold in Olympics at Beijing. While being so close to your goal can be nerve-racking, Bindra has managed to hold his head high more than once. “To be this close to the goal that you have chased so long can be petrifying and tantalising. The pressure of the situation was not just about the constant journey but to be the best athlete in the world to take the medal away,” he told the audiences, comprising a number of his kid fans, while remembering his Olympic journey.  

On being questioned about his success strategy, the shooting champion said that there was a conscious strategy followed from the beginning of the year. “I think success is based on a strange combination of being totally bloody-minded and yet completely flexible. Since the Olympics, I have been asked many questions, about the reasons of my success and also about my preparation and training. The fact is that success is a part of a conscious strategy, followed from the beginning of the year. Others I have learnt from the team of people I dealt with,” he answered.

Bindra, blessed with supportive parents — though his mother would always ask him to study and his father would ask him to play when he was a kid — has his stint with failures. “The journey to the Olympics game was not an easy journey. Every time when things kept moving straight forward and I fell, it gave me an unstoppable momentum. But to be honest, there have been many failures and many low points. In between taking up this sport and standing on top of that Olympic podium there have been many nine point shots. I believe that my story is relevant to all of us and to India as well. Not everybody who goes to the Olympic Games wins. All of us have goals and all of us have talent. We all face the challenge of using our talents to achieve our goals,” he said.

Speaking out his mind on achievements, Bindra highlighted three attributes to success — right attitude, motivation and focus. “There were personal and professional values that were crucial to my success. There were three values in particular responsible for my success — my attitude, my motivation and my focus.

While having the right attitude is a key ingredient to chase one’s dreams, willingness to learn each day, every minute, equally determines one’s success quotient. And last but not the least one has to be focused on the target. Bindra said he was not only careful not to start believing that he knew everything and there was nothing else to learn, he also tried to keep his feet on the ground as that allowed him to learn and keep improving.

“Since I was introduced to the game at the age of 13, I have constantly tried to have the right attitude. It was quite clear from the first time I lifted a rifle that I had a special talent and when anyone has achieved success, whether in the board room, classroom or in a sports field, observers are quick to attribute success to talent. But do you think that all the talent in the world would have meant anything without the right attitude? There are a lot of capable people in this world and if you want to compete with them, you have to use the talent you have,” he said.

At an early age, he would get emotional about winning as he was “extremely determined to win” from the very beginning, he acknowledged. “Eventually, I realised that getting emotional would not make issues any better. I have to learn to control my emotions,” he said.

Bindra went for a commando course just a few weeks before the Beijing Games that involved tough training. It taught him something new about coping up with adrenaline and using it in a positive way, he said. As a sportsperson who always wanted to be the best not just in India but in the world, he always aimed far above the ground. “From the very beginning of taking up this sport, I have always set my standards high …
My father is a successful businessman and may be some of this attitude comes from him,” he said.

Coming to motivation and focus, he said while he needed rewards at the end of every day, at the end of every shot, he has always had good focus. He is someone who believes that you keep trying, keep trying and keep trying and either you succeed or you keep trying till the end. “… In a warm-up competition, I shot a 592 out of 600 and I did not even make into the finals. I realised there was something wrong, a missing link in my shooting but I did not know what it was or how to fix it …I was trying to find out what was it…. Even my coaches wondered whether I was doing the right thing,” he said.

Bindra, who also went neurofeedback training, a technology to monitor thoughts, believes that Indians have the best hand-eye co-ordination. His training would at times involve screeching, yelling babies, to distract his attention but that did not take away his focus.

“Focus is crucial in my sport. I don’t take my eyes off the target. I have always had good focus…Focus should be like a torch beam. It has to be bright. We needed a broad focus. The competition is like that,” he said. For he said that in shooting there is no recovery shot and every single mistake stays on record.

Even as someone who had a faulty rifle, (“at the beginning of the Olympics, I had a faulty rifle …someone was trying to sabotage my rifle”), Bindra had his focus on the game for it was not the rifle but his own destiny he took in his hands. “As a 13 year old taking up the sport, I was always fascinated by shooting and marksmanship. What to me means the most was when I lifted a rifle; I was taking my destiny into my own hand. I am a perfectionist,” he said.

Though he might not be the custodian of his latest Olympic gold medal for it is in the safe keep of his mother, his medals take up a few walls in his room, said his proud mother.

As someone who believes that his success is his country’s success, Bindra feels that no South African, no Australian, no West Indian can do what our sportsmen can do. When the rest of the world talks about Indian sport, they use the word ‘potential, potential and potential’, he said but asked a significant thought-provoking question: