"Hard Work is a Talent," Abhinav Bindra launches autobiography

(From right) Sharada Ugra, Rohit Brijnath, Abhinav Bindra, Ajay Maken and Aroo Purie in Abhinav Bindra's autobiography launch.

“Practice is a talent. Hard work is a talent. Perseverance is a talent,” Abhinav Bindra said at his autobiography launch.

Success is an obsession with an ambition. Nobody exemplifies this better than Abhinav Bindra, India’s only Gold Medalist shooter in Olympics. It was indeed fitting that Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and Rohit Brijnath, products of the same factory, made their presence in his autobiography launch.

“A Shot at History – My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold”, reads the cover page, succinctly telling us what the content would be. The book launch took place at the Mysore Hall of the ITC Gardenia, Bangalore.

Rohit Brijnath, arguably India’s best sports writer, has co-authored this book which runs up to 21 chapters. It starts with Abhinav’s disappointing outing at the 2004 Athens Olympics and talks about his excruciating journey to the one at Beijing in 2008, one of the proudest moments in the Indian sporting history.

The journey from no medal to gold medal is what the book deals about and here is an excerpt from this book:

“The cricketer has Test matches through the year, the tennis player has four Grand Slam events in twelve months, the golfer has the same number of majors annually. Constantly, there is an opportunity for redemption, a chance to stake a claim for greatness. Not for me. My only chance comes every four years. My only chance is seventy shots in 125 minutes every four years (the first 60 shots have to be fired in 105 minutes, each of the final ten shots within 75 seconds.”

Abhinav Bindra talked about the ‘meditative experience’ that one gets while training in isolation and what it means to stay oblivious to things one has little control over and invest the heart and soul into what one dreams off.

“That is when I am shooting for the pure pleasure of producing the perfect shot, with nothing on the line, with no one watching you. Put 25 pence on the line, and everything changes.”

Now the words in the book might be Rohit Brijnath’s but the man behind the words or rather the man who the book talks about is definitely Abhinav. Rohit has only contributed to the decoration part of it.

Rahul Dravid spoke about how intimidating it was to think that Abhinav Bindra has invested his entire career to seize that one moment which only occurs once in every four years.

“For Abhinav, that moment is it — nothing before that matters, nothing that comes after will matter. Investing an entire life for one hour, one shot — that is intimidating,” Dravid said.

Both Abhinav Bindra and Rahul Dravid are men in a relentless pursuit of excellence; men who are meticulous in taking care of the parts that are almost invisible to the viewer.

Dravid conceded that he couldn’t help but notice these similarities between them. “That single minded pursuit of excellence that he talks about, it resonates with me. It is not about the gold medal, but about the quest for the perfect shot, the quest to be the best shooter he possibly can be — that for me is the essence of sport,” Dravid added.

Meanwhile, Abhinav was wary about the perils of fame and how fleeting it could be. “Oh, I am very lucky… People read about me only once in four years,” he quipped.

Some names might get erased from the history. Not his!

Courtesy: http://prempanicker.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/hard-work-is-a-talent-abhinav-bindra/