Abhinav Bindra

Abhinav Bindra is a renowned Indian shooter who put India on the global shooting map by winning the gold in the 10 m Air Rifle event at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. He holds the honour of being the first Indian to win an individual Olympic gold. Born in a well-to-do Punjabi Sikh family, Bindra showed interest in shooting from an early age and to encourage his interest, his parents had an indoor shooting range installed at their home in Patiala, Punjab. He represented India in the 1998 Commonwealth Games, at the age of 15, and was the youngest participant in the games. He started getting noticed after he won a bronze medal in the 2001 Munich World Cup by creating a new junior world record score of 597/600. Thereafter, he never looked back and his career graph went up and up. Besides winning the Olympic gold medal, he has won several medals in Commonwealth Games over the years and has also won the World Shooting Championship. Bindra’s main contribution lay in the fact that he kindled public interest in shooting in India and has inspired many budding shooters to take the sport.  He is the first Indian to have held concurrently the world and Olympic titles for the men’s 10-meter air rifle event, having earned those honors at the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2006 ISSF World Shooting Championship. Bindra’s primary outreach to Indian sports is through the Abhinav Bindra Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to integrate sports, science and technology into Indian sports and encourage high-performance physical training.