A SHOT AT HISTORY by Bindra Abhinav/ Brijnath Rohit

Author:Bindra, Abhinav/ Brijnath, Rohit [Bindra, Abhinav/ Brijnath, Rohit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPORT AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Published: 2014-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

a) Athens—Ten Days Before

The pain was cruel. I couldn’t chew. I couldn’t talk.

It was ten days to go for the 2004 Athens Olympics and I suffered my first minor setback.

A toothache.

Uwe Riesterer scouted around and found me a dentist, but a problem arose. I was paranoid about taking the wrong medication before the Olympics because so many drugs figure in the anti-doping list. So I said no to painkillers. Antibiotics were inevitable, but they weaken you, just drain a little bit from your battery. My mouth had stitches and once the local anaesthetic wore off the pain was even sharper. To complete my agony, a throat infection set in.

In the midst of this misery and growing panic, Uwe told me: ‘Listen boy, this is God’s will. We can’t help it. If you want to go for the Olympics, you go, otherwise, you can drop out and nobody will blame you. This is a situation that is beyond our control. I am sure everyone will understand.’

I wasn’t amused, but it brought clarity to my mind. You don’t win medals by being weak, by giving up, by letting go. Pain exists but it is manageable. It’s like disappointment, you learn to shut it away in some cupboard in the brain. I knew I was not going to chicken out and I told him:

‘I don’t care. I will go to Athens.’

Uwe, a man of interesting contradictions, was also being clever. He told my mother he would be content if I came twentieth in Athens, which immediately unnerved her. Here we were talking about gold and he wasn’t even talking finals! Was this coach for real? My sister, Divya, confident in me, even put a wager on my score: she told Uwe, ‘Abhinav will shoot 597.’

But the German wasn’t demeaning me, he was both needling me while taking the pressure off. The tooth was a distraction, yet he was cleverly attempting to bring me to that mental state where I might feel I had nothing to lose.

Maybe it was working because my training was superb, my skills sharp. In three days in Athens, I shot only a single 9. I even scored a perfect 600. In the pre-event training, my last ten shots were 106.5, an average of over 10.6 each shot. Like a racehorse, poised, pushing, I was ready.

I shot slowly in the qualifying, every shot prepared like it was some minor masterpiece of breathing and balance. Three times I left my gun and exited my shooting position, caught in my own private perfection, inhaling the air and contemplating the next shot to come. Everyone was taut, nervous. Amit was outside. Crying. Divya, my sister, later said: ‘I was so scared when I saw your first 9, I had to go outside. I couldn’t watch.’ The room, she said, was suffocating with pressure and so she stood outside the range and kept asking people the score. She was right, of course; I shot 597, which was better than the Olympic record of 596.

Two Chinese were ahead of me.

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