“I am done with shooting, even hobby shooting,” said Abhinav Bindra in detailed comments after coming fourth in the 10m air rifle event here at the Olympic Shooting Centre on Monday.
Talking to reporters an hour after the event, a much more relaxed Bindra said that he did not know what he will do in the future, but shooting would not be any part of it, even as a hobby. He said he had done his best but had come out without a medal.
Asked whether he would be at least shooting in his backyard range, he quipped:
“I am turning that into a vegetable garden. Are you serious? he was asked, “don’t I look like a serious person,” he replied.
He was then asked if he was not just putting up a brave face.
The only gold medallist India had produced an individual event, Bindra said after twenty years and five Olympics, he deserved to take it easy.
Smiling and joking with the reporters outside the shooting arena because non-rights holding TV crews are not allowed inside, he said he had to work hard and practice constantly for Olympics as “my job is not as easy as yours”.
He did concede that not getting a medal did “hurt a little bit”, but added “that’s life. It’s part and parcel of the game”.
To a question as to how he kept on going, despite some injuries over the last couple of year, Bindra said:
He said the sight of the original gun, made especially for the Rio Olympics, had broken when it fell in the morning, so he had use the spare gun. But he did not think that had any effect.
When reporters persisted in asking him what he would do next he said he had barely finished an Olympic event and people want to know what he would do for the next few years. Asked if he could coach, he said:
So how would he give back to the profession or help the young, he was asked.
It seemed that he had quickly made peace with the fact that it was the end of a career without a win. When two TV presenters were trying to pull him away towards their own cameras, he told them:
Asked about the future of Indian shooting, he said he would wait and watch.
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