Abhinav Bindra

·         On August 11, 2008 in the 10 metres air rifle event at the Beijing Shooting Range Hall rifleman Abhinav Bindra created history by bagging first-ever individual Olympic gold medal for India.

·         Zhu Qinan of China broke in tears after losing on his home turf

·         In 2004 (Athens) and in 2008(Beijing), two of the contestants - Abhinav Bindra (India) and Chinan Zhu (China) figured prominently in both the events.

·         He missed the last Asian Games in Doha to improve his back

·         Before coming to Beijing, Abhinav had trained in Germany with his Swiss coach Gaby Buehlmann along with other Indian shooters.

Mission IAS’2009

·         The first gold medal in any individual category for India in the 108-year Olympics history.

·         Only other individual of Indian parentage to win Olympic gold (Los Angeles, 1984) was US-born Alexi Singh Grewal, the winner of the gruelling 192km road race in Los Angeles (1984) Olympic Games. But Alexi is US-born and had never been to India.

·         For India a Gold came 28 years after - last won at the 1980 Moscow Olympics (hockey)

·         India won hockey Gold in 1980 Moscow Olympics; Leander Paes (Atlanta, 1996), K Malleswari won bronze (Sydney 2000), Rathore won Silver (Athens, 2004)

·         Abhinav, who was the youngest Indian participant at the 2000 Olympic Games, won six gold medals at various international meets in 2001.

·         In the Air rifle event at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, Manchester, he won gold in the Pairs event and silver in the individual event.

·         At the 2004 Olympic Games, he broke the Olympic record but failed to win a medal.

·         He is a recipient of the Arjuna award in 2001 and the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award for the year 2001-2002.