New Gold
 

Family leads India’s celebrations of first gold
Aug 11, 4:54 am EDT
By Krittivas Mukherjee

NEW DELHI, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Abhinav Bindra’s mother joked that his Olympic triumph had made him “the country’s most eligible bachelor” as Indians celebrated a historic first individual gold medal.

Bindra’s family led the party after victory in the 10m air rifle event brought joy to a nation of more than one billion.

“He has won the greatest medal in the world,” an ecstatic A.S. Bindra, the shooter’s father told Reuters. Bindra senior is a successful businessman who has provided his son with an air-conditioned shooting range where he can train.

Neighbours and strangers streamed in and were offered sweets at the family home in the northern city of Chandigarh.

Babli Bindra, his mother, quipped: “Now I have lots of work ahead as he is the country’s most eligible bachelor.”

Already, the 25-year-old shooter’s female fan base is growing.

“Abhinav, will you marry me? My parents will have to buy that much less GOLD now,” read one congratulatory message posted by ‘Kaveri’ on the Reuters website.

The family held a special prayer session on Sunday and brought out a newspaper advertisement urging people to pray for their son.

Bindra’s victory eclipsed everything else on Indian TV channels which hailed it as a morale booster for a country with few global sporting stars.

People poured on to the streets in several cities, strangers hugged each other and exchanged sweets and congratulatory messages after the victory.

As the shooter fixed his gaze on the final target, the moment condensed the hopes of an entire nation starved of a solo Olympics gold.

He hit a near perfect 10.8 in a brilliant final shot to pull ahead of Henri Hakkinen of Finland, who stumbled in his last shot allowing China’s Zhu Qinan, the favourite, to take the silver.

India had only won four individual medals, none of them gold, since sending their first team to the Summer Games in 1928.

The Indian men’s hockey team have won the Olympic tournament eight times, but the last time was in 1980.

“We perhaps did not expect a gold and had long resigned to the fact that India performs poorly in the Games,” said Subir Mukherjee, a Kolkata resident.

Former Indian athletes stars hailed the victory, saying the gold will now spur the Indian team in the Beijing Games.

“It is a great achievement,” Vasudevan Baskaran, captain of the 1980 gold-winning hockey team told Reuters. “I’m thrilled, more than when we won our last gold medal.”

“It is important we won a gold medal at the early stages of the Games.” he said. “This will change the way our athletes perform whether it is shooting, archery, boxing or badminton.” (Additional reporting by Jatindra Dash, Geetinder Garewal, Sujoy Dhar and N. Ananthanarayanan; editing by Keith Weir)

Notwithstanding.............India just plainly sucks in sports, they should just concentrate on academics and running businesses, thats what they are good for and of course, propagating out of control.

I was curious what kind of rifle he was using. I imagine it will come out at some point.

Congrats him and India, but your logic is right up there with telling all of Africa to give up anything but sports because that's what black people do best.

Thats fine, its the trend......for years this nation has been sending huge contingent full of officials and less sports persons and coming back home with no medals. Its absurd when the nation is going gaga over a solitary medal when their next door neighbor and even smaller nations are winning medals by the dozen. As I said, stick to books and running shops.......best suited. Take a look at Indian immigrants in west, US in particular, show me one outstanding sports person?

Hymie Banarjee Two-Seals. the famous Jewish-Indian-Eskimo kosher vindaloo-powered kayaker.

Thats the Jewish gene in him, certainly not the Indian, as I said, rest my case.

Pathetic to say the least.

Btw, Bannerjee means he is half Bengali and that means no Vindaloo for him, he will puke at the mere thought of it.

Of course a country would go nuts for it's first gold medal.
I'm surprised you are defending your racist statement however- Pathetic to say the least. very true. If I told you that I and most people don't see black people that are successful in owning a business (unless it's scrap metal and a old pickup going to the dump) so that allows me to stand by my statement that blacks are good for nothing but winning basketball games- could I rest my case?

After participating it for 104 years, first individual gold medal and thats not pathetic for you? India has won 8 team golds in past during its glory days with hockey till the Euro nations learnt to play that game well and whup its ass. Whats racist about saying that if the shoe fits, wear it, so far its fitting the hopeless under achieving Indians quite well I must say.

It's not the athletic lack of prowess that we are talking about.

It is, they don't have the genes, most of em are vegetarians and weak and under developed for generations, not suited for any kind of athletics. OTOH they do well in Spelling Bee and Academic Olympiads.

Aw, crap. I suspected that there might be regional name differences. I didn't know vindaloo was regional.

Why are there so many people named, "Patel" in the motel business in LA, TX, and AR?

B

India is a sub continent so not only are the differences regional, its ethnic, linguistic and cultural as well.

Vindaloo is from Portuguese Vin da loo which meant cooked in wine and the Goa version is far from that delicate dish, its full of pungent spices and vinegar is used instead of wine and its not up to everyone's taste, certainly not mine and many other Indians as well.

Patels are business community from Gujrat who are known to stick together and they have done so for centuries. The Patels you see in US are mostly the ones who Idi Amin threw out of Uganda and also from various other parts of Africa. Its a sheer coincidence that the name Patel rhymes so well with the word Motel. :D

Yep, and in 104 years of Olympics, this country and so called democracy of 1 billion gives one individual gold, shame on them in every sense.