Abhinav Bindra just won India's first individual Gold medal in Olympic history!!!! This is absolutely unbelievable! This happened just a few minutes ago and thanks to the power of the internet, I was actually able to follow the scores in real time on the official website for the Olympic Games, as the event unfolded!
At around 9:00 PM in Los Angeles, I was on Rediff.com, following their live Olympic updates to see which Indian athletes were in action today. I was checking the Badminton schedule to see when Saina Nehwal would be playing Chen Wang of Hong Kong, when I read about Abhinav Bindra's qualification for the 10m Air Rifle final.
So, I checked the Olympics site to see when the Final for the event was to be held. When I saw the "Live Results" link next to the "Start List" for the Final, I realised that the event was happening at that moment! As I clicked on the live results, I saw Bindra's name in 2nd place and I thought he had won Silver! My heart jumped out but I quickly looked at the score sheet to understand how the competition works and if this was actually the final score. Just then, the page got automatically refreshed and Bindra's name was on the top of the list! I figured out that the contestants had made the first 7 of 10 shots up until that point and he was leading all contestants with 3 more shots to go!
I started studying the scores as the updates kept coming every 90 secs or so. I saw that our man had done very well to take the lead from the two other guys who performed better than him in the qualifying rounds, Henri Hakkinen from Finland and, local favorite, Qinan Zhu from China. In the 8th round, Bindra recorded his worst score of the final, a 10.0. Hakkinen remained in 2nd place but had closed the gap to just a tenth of a point. Zhu recorded a 10.6 and was closing in as well.
At this point, with just 2 more shots remaining, I realised that Bindra was well ahead of Alin George Moldoveanu who was in fourth place, and that Bronze was almost a guarantee....barring any unforeseen circumstances. I mean, he couldn't mess it up from here, could he!???
I waited desperately for the scores to get updated, and here I have to hand it to the Olympics website which is very easy to navigate and updates are posted almost instantly for all the events. Bindra posted his second worst score in round 9, a 10.2, and gave Hakkinen the chance to catch up and tie the scores. Since Hakkinen scored highest in the qualifying rounds, he took over 1st place from Bindra, even though, they had the same score. Zhu, in the meantime, closed the gap even further by scoring 10.6 in the 9th round, and was very much in striking distance to take Gold. I looked at the scores of all contestants and saw numbers ranging from 9.2 to 10.8 and thought that, Bindra could still finish out of the medal positions if he makes a bad final shot under pressure with a Gold medal opportunity on the line.
Shame on me for being so cynical......because, Bindra saved his absolube best for last! He scored 10.8 on his final shot and blew away Hakkinen who choked and posted a 9.7! Zhu posted 10.6 and passed Hakkinen for 2nd place but no one was touching Bindra who ran way with Gold!!!
I ran in to the bedroom to tell my wife what had just happened. We waited for the news to be officially posted on Rediff.com, just to make sure that we had understood things right. I furiously clicked on the refresh button to see if any headlines were updated on Rediff's home page. We waited for a few minutes and then....there it was. "Abhinav Bindra wins GOLD"!!!! What a moment!
