India may be gearing up for its best-ever Olympics, according to Abhinav Bindra, India’s only individual Olympic gold medallist. Speaking to sports broadcaster Sreeduth S. Pillai on THE WEEK’s Namaste Tokyo series, Bindra said there had never before been so many world number ones and numbers twos in shooting that were heading for the Olympics.
In a candid conversation, Bindra talks about his mindset during his Olympic victory. On being asked about the moment he won his gold medal in 2008, he said it was the outcome of years and years of hard work.
“Everybody likes to romanticise the outcome, which is great. But there is much more to it...I don’t think I value perhaps the gold so much, but I look at it as what type of person I became in process of winning that medal. That is the true value of that medal and that really is the power of sport, how it can change people, drive them towards achieving a certain goal. Those are elements which I look back at with fondnes,” he said.
On his preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics,he says he approached it as a “very secure human being” as he knew he had already done everything that was humanely possible to become the best version of himself. “I was already a winner before I took my first shot, I was a winner in my own eyes,” he says.
Bindra is confident in both the present and future generations of shooters. “20 years back I started shooting under a mango tree. Now when a young shooting athlete wants to start shooting, he or she has the ability to start their career in a world class Olympic level shooting facility in certain parts of our country,” he notes.
Watch all this and more in the third episode of Namaste Tokyo. Make sure to catch episode four, featuring Olympian boxer Vijendra Singh.
