India win gold medal at Olympics!!!

We finally did it! We finally won our first ever individual gold medal at the Olympics. It was with great pride that I stood at attention as they played Jana Gana Mana at the awards ceremony.

A big congratulations to Abhinav Bindra who brought the medal home in the men’s 10m Air Rifle shooting at the Beijing Shooting Hall on the outskirts of the Chinese capital with a score of 700.5.
Following closely were Zhu Qinan of China who missed the gold by one point and Henri Hakkinen of Finland who missed the gold by 2 points.

India has received gold medals for hockey before but never for an individual sport. In fact, the last time India won an Olympic Gold was at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, for Men’s hockey when they beat Spain 4-3 and have been waiting to see that shiny yellow ever since.

Now answer me this -

A country as big as ours with ample talent and ability manages to score their first individual gold medal in the year 2008?

It’s not like we have a dearth of good sportsmen or resources to provide training facilities in the country. It’s just that no sport except cricket is given any ghaas in India.

Once we have well trained professionals as coaches to ensure that the athletes are in shape, I’m sure we can look forward to many more gold medals.

Till then, I guess we’ll just have to bank on Abhinav!