The Rise Of Abhinav Bindra - India's First-Ever Individual Olympic Gold Medallist & Rio Flag-Bearer

AFP

Abhinav Bindra is a person full of discipline and self-motivation. That's primarily what you need if you're harbouring hopes of being an Olympic gold medalist. Bindra achieved that feat, something that no other individual from India had done previously, when he hit the bulls eye in 2008. The national anthem was played as Bindra clinched the 10m Air Rifle gold at the Beijing Games and the country had a moment of pride never experienced since 1980 when the men's hockey team won India an Olympic gold medal.

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Such was the monumental achievement of Bindra. Now, eight years later, Bindra goes into the Rio Olympics one final time.

Already having announced his retirement from shooting as a competitive sport, Bindra dons many hats as an iconic Olympian - one of them being India's flag-bearer at the opening ceremony and the other being the Goodwill Ambassador of the Indian contingent there.

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For his sheer talent and unmatched abilities as a teenage shooter, Bindra bagged the Arjuna Award at 18 years of age and a year later, he got the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna. A year after his breakthrough success in Beijing, he was honoured with India's third highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan.

He was the youngest member of the Indian contingent in the 2000 Sydney Olympics at just 15 years of age.

Two years later in Manchester he won the gold medal in pairs 10m Air Rifle event at CWG.

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After failing to win a medal in 2004 Athens Games, Bindra's watershed moment came in the 2006 ISSF World Championships in Zagreb when he won the individual gold, an achievement that Bindra holds utmost regard for at a personal level. In the same year, he won the pairs gold at 2006 Melbourne CWG along with a bronze in the singles category in the same games.

Scaling peaks from there on, Bindra bagged a gold in the pairs event with Gagan Narang at the 2010 Delhi CWG and a silver in the individual event. He followed it up with a silver at the Asian Games at Guangzhou the same year.

In 2014, he won the CWG gold at Glasgow and Asiad bronze in individual and team categories. He sealed a fifth successive Olympic spot, at Rio, with a sixth-place finish at the 2015 ISSF Shooting World Cup in Munich.

Bindra, who also holds the rank of a honorary lieutenant colonel in India's territorial army, has his intentions clear this time around. The whole of India will look forward for him to finish on a golden high.