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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Abhinav Bindra: can’t get no satisfaction
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Abhinav Bindra: can’t get no satisfaction

At practice in his home, he is bettering world record scores every week. Rohit Brijnath on why the shooter drives him nuts

Abhinav Bindra. Photo: Vipin Kumar/Hindustan TimesPremium
Abhinav Bindra. Photo: Vipin Kumar/Hindustan Times

It is Sunday evening. Last week. The SMS comes.

“627.9." A number but with an emoticon attached.

One of those grim, mouth-turned-downwards ones.

I’m laughing. You haven’t understood the idea of understated till you’ve spent time with Abhinav Bindra. He’s like some lord of the lukewarm. That 627.9 is his qualifying score which 2 hours ago helped him win gold at the Asian Air Gun Championship.

“Not bad," he says.

He’s not easily impressed, but this may be why. In the 10m air rifle, the world record in qualifying, over 60 shots, is 633.5. In practice, Bindra has been breaking it with awful regularity. 634 one day, 635 the next. William Tell on Tuesday and then Hawkeye on Thursday. In two months, roughly 10 times he breaks the world record.

But none of it counts. It’s practice. It’s easier to be perfect. It’s why he sends the scowling emoticon after his competition last Sunday. It’s a winning score, but it’s not yet the very good score he wants.

You’d think that after the entitled athletes that pockmark our planet, Bindra’s humility and plain-speaking would be refreshing, but no, he drives me nuts. For instance, here is a favourite phrase of his. “I don’t relate to that book," he says to me about the one we did together in 2011. I reply, dear God, please, buddy, don’t say that. Sales have long peaked anyway. Why can’t you tweet and say the book is essential to who you are? He laughs.

Yet this is why Bindra is fun. He’s not always right, he’s not even always on this planet but he’s real and honest. The book is on the shelf, the 2008 Olympic gold is in a cabinet, the shooter he was is in the attic. Like an old suit that doesn’t fit. Once in a while, for a function where his Olympic past is celebrated, he dusts off that suit. But mostly to this pragmatic athlete the past is of no use. Life is not about the best he was. Only the best he can be.

This is not exactly easy because his finger shakes. For the past year he’s had a tremor. In a sport which prescribes stillness, where his trigger weight is just 25g, where an accidental shot terrifies him, the tremor is not helpful.

He’s had tests, yet his finger shivers. On Sunday, in competition, his finger quivers. “It’s hard to shoot if 90% of your attention is on your finger. You kind of need to forget all about it. I am sick and tired of it."

In another life Bindra would be a mad inventor who never exits his garage. So to help his finger he builds a support for it which he’s incorporated into his stock. Think of it as a tiny shelf, 2cm from the trigger, on which he rests his finger. Think of this also: If he’s breaking records in practice with a shaking finger, he might well be talented.

Bindra educates and amuses even while talking in the uninterested tone of an enquiry counter attendant. His life is focused on the pursuit of better and he appears as a polite paradox: fulfilled by shooting because he’s always unsatisfied by it. There’s always something more to be done at his range. Like building a new grip. Or, what the hell, six of them.

The other day, he sends WhatsApp messages of himself holding a long pipe which is half-filled with water.

“My balance training invention."

If you hold it horizontally, like a gun—and he’s attached a sight to it—it’s a perfect tool to check balance. If it’s not steady, the water moves. If he’s not aligned correctly, the water moves. The pipe is the same length and weight as his gun. But of course, he’s a perfectionist.

The Olympics are 300-odd days away. Still time to prepare for his examination, which is the carrying of practice form into competition without interruptions to his brain circuitry. This is every athlete’s test, to stand amidst a crowd, alongside fear, a scoreboard judging, the heart accelerating, and still be as good as practice. It’s only when he crosses the border between practice and competition that the athlete meets real life and discovers his real self.

Practice is Bindra’s pleasure. Practice matters because it tells him what he’s capable of. But practice with him is never straightforward. “If training goes too well, you’re expecting to do good. If you’re expecting too much, then it brings fear of not doing well." Practice, if it’s too comfortable, worries him. “I don’t understand how psychologists say ‘relax’. I think you almost need a little crisis before competition." This has always been his theory: Winning is suffering, so you better practise that, too.

He can’t precisely tell you why he’s breaking world records in his range except that it won’t last. He isn’t sure what exactly he’s doing right. Is it the balance, new grip, pellets, gun, breathing, fitness? How much does each factor contribute? He just knows how he feels and it’s this feeling he needs to preserve and replicate in Rio. But in sport, of course, that is impossible.

It is Sunday evening. Last week. He’s late because producing 90ml of urine for a dope test after tense competition is a task that appreciably cannot be hurried. Weariness is attached to him like a weight, for shooting’s pressure to be perfect is exhausting. “I am too tired to be happy," he sighs.

And yet he likes this, sweats for it, wakes for it. This moment in the hall when you can’t screw up, when practice is put to the test, when you’re not chasing a world record but just trying desperately to collect your skill. It is almost painful and yet this is exactly what he wants.

The chance to be great.

Just don’t tell him he already is.

Rohit Brijnath is a columnist with The Strait Times, Singapore.

Also read | Rohit Brijnath’s previous Lounge columns.

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Published: 02 Oct 2015, 10:31 AM IST
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