Shooting Star wins Olympic Gold – Chak De India!

Someone once said that ‘Cricket is the only sport that matters in India’. If you agree to that I’m sorry to say that you are wrong. I see every chance that India is going to loose the ongoing cricket test against Sri Lanka. But I don’t care. Neither does the rest of India. Yes on any ordinary day there would’ve been plenty of cursing and crying over it. But not today, not today. For today there is a new kid on the block to fuss over, a new Hero. A real one. The hero has a name and that is Abhinav Bindra. What is his extraordinary feat? This shooter just won India its 1^st ever individual gold in the history of Olympics at the Beijing Olympics.

The last time India won an Olympic gold was in 1980. So that means it has taken a long 28 years of wait since the nation tasted that kind of victory and this definitely calls for a Desi celebration. As I watch the post win press conference of this young man I cant help but conclude that he has a healthy sense of humor and is just your humble next-door boy that every Indian mother would love to get their daughters married to.. I’m wondering how great a moment is this in terms of Indian Sport. It strikes me that this could be rated the greatest till date, even higher than the 1983 World cup win. I mean the world cup was just a contest between a handful of countries, however in the Olympics we are talking about global competition in the real sense of it with almost all nations participating in it.

I’m not much of a sportsperson myself, but I know the weight of this incident and can only imagine the impact it is going to have on the nation. For overnight this young lad will become a legend, overnight every word he says is going to make headlines. Overnight every politician is going to start preaching promises of investing more money in professional Shooting. Overnight every kid in India will idolize this hero. Overnight India will be filled with delight and more importantly hope.

As I go through his earlier feats and begin to understand how hard he had to train to reach here I see a lot of potential in him. A lot of potential to keep going on for long. But as I watch this confident 25 yr old young man on the victory stand with his shy smile, fair skin, neat haircut, cute nerd looks supported with his spectacles I see another potential in him too. One that could work out for the better or for the worse. The potential to be seen endorsing mobile phones and health drinks. The potential to be the poster boy in every teenage Indian girl’s bedroom. A potential to fall prey to the celebrity lifestyle we Indians so often offer our sports heroes.

But then that’s all a thing of the future and for the moment as you said yourself Abhinav, today is your day, so enjoy every moment of it. You have made the nation proud and more importantly given us faith to “believe in India”. You are indeed our “Shooting Star’. As for the rest of the Indian team in Beijing all we have to say is “Give us another one, just like the other one”.