Shooting is the most successful sport for India at the Olympic Games, second after only hockey. The country’s first and only individual Oly...
Shooting is the most successful sport for India at the Olympic Games, second after only hockey. The country’s first and only individual Olympic gold has come in this discipline - when Abhinav Bindra won the 10m air rifle at Beijing 2008. Four years later, at London 2012, there were two shooting medals for India and now, by 2021, India has one of the strongest continents with multiple Asian Games and World Cup medal winners.
The start of this success story, at the Olympics at least, can partially be traced back to one event – Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s silver medal in double trap at the 2004 Athens Olympics. It was India’s only medal in the 2004 Athens Games; the last edition that saw India return with a single medal.
It was India’s first-ever individual silver medal at the Games and the first medal in shooting, a sport India was not traditionally good at. It was only at the preceding 2000 Sydney Olympics that Anjali Bhagwat had become the first Indian shooter to qualify for finals. Thus the Army man’s triumph – as the first silver – was then seen as a source of inspiration to many, including Bindra himself.
“Rathore changed me. His silver ensured...
