Abhinav Bindra defeats reigning Olympic champion, bags 2 gold medals in Netherlands

Abhinav Bindra

Abhinav Bindra, gold medalist for India at the Beijing Olympics, clinched two gold medals at the InterShoot Tri series championship being held at Hague, Netherlands.

In the first competition on Thursday, Bindra had qualified for the finals in 8th position with a score of 613.3, but beat the top qualifier Peter Hellenbrand of Holland with a strong finish which saw him register a score of 209.3 in the finals.

In the second match on Friday, Bindra topped the qualifying charts with a score of 627.7, 6.6 points better than the second placed qualifier. Bindra continued his strong performance in the finals by shooting 209 to comfortably clinch gold.

In both the events, Bindra managed to defeat London Olympics champion Alin George Moldoveanue. The Romanian could only win a bronze and a silver in the two matches.

Results:

Men: Air rifle-2: 1. Abhinav Bindra 209.0 (627.7); 2. Alin George Moldoveanu (Rom) 205.7 (621.0); 3. Jorgen C. Persson (Swe) 184.1 (615.7).

Air rifle-1: 1. Abhinav Bindra 209.3 (613.3); 2. Peter Hellenbrand (Ned) 206.9 (628.9); 3. Alin George Moldoveanu (Rom) 185.7 (624.4).