Video - Abhinav Bindra’s Gold
Watch Abhinav Bindra win the gold for India in the 10 meter air rifle event at the Olympics. The video is more than an hour long, fast forward to the 25th minute to see the last round and fast forward to the 47th minute to see the awards ceremony. Towards the end is the playing of the Indian national anthem and I do hope that the anthem is played a few times more during these games.
I am both happy and sad at him winning the gold medal. Happy because a medal is a medal, especially a gold in an individual event and a first for India at the Olympics. Sad because the second most populous country in the world produces just a handful of athletes who can compete at the international level. I was joyous when I came to know about the gold at work, and almost went bouncing to my American co-workers giving them the news but half a second later I realized how odd it would look to them when they have athletes who have won 3 golds in the 3 events they have participated in till now and aim to win 7 more.
In other news my roommate Pratheep says that the Left parties in Kerala and West Bengal have given a call for a bandh tomorrow. They allege that it was a conspiracy by the Congress and BJP against China and that’s the reason the Chinese shooter Zhu Qinan came second in this event behind Abhinav 
This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 11:02 pm and is filed under miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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on August 12, 2008 at 5:38 am Prude wrote:
Yeah it’s sad we produce only a handful of athletes that can compete internationally but it’s a start nonetheless! And I would still regardless of how many golds America won publicise this little victory to as many American friends I’ve got around…which I think you did!
Sometimes I feel we as Indians are never happy enough about our wins and fail to encourage our players and tend to criticise them more. The value of a win for us has to become greater only then will more be encouraged to do better. The US and most of these western countries blow their trumpets for all achievements small or big which is the secret behind why so many of them want to go on excelling.
on August 13, 2008 at 9:51 pm krakoosh wrote:
you know.. if there were individual Olympics for math, physics, chemistry, computer programming, carrom and chess… India would have been #1 in the medals tally in Beijing! I don’t have any doubt about that. I personally would have won the gold in lazyness - but i somehow have a feeling beating you will be tough work!
on August 14, 2008 at 7:51 am JhQuest wrote:
I’d rather India feed all its poor and win no golds.
A country like China is an example where people are still poor but very few die of hunger.
on August 24, 2008 at 3:46 am JhQ wrote:
Further to this, check the link out.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/08/24/1219516233765.html
Would it be money well spent in India?