Indian shooter Abhinav Bindra finished 4th in his 10m Air Rifle final, tallying a score of 163.8 in the final to miss a second Olympic medal by a whisker. The 33-year-old was involved in a shootout with Serhiy Kulish of Ukraine, and fired a 10.0 which was not good enough to defeat Kulish's 10.5. Bindra thus had to bow out of the competition, settling for 4th place.
But there was more to Bindra’s missed podium than what meets the eye. Digvijay Singh Deo, a senior journalist who recently authored the book ‘My Olympic Journey', took to his Twitter handle a few minutes after the completion of the final to reveal an incident that had occurred earlier in the day.
The journalist said that Bindra had fallen down along with his gun, and breaking his ‘sight’ in the process (the ‘sight’ is a piece of equipment in the rifle through which the shooter takes aim). He then took a replacement rifle and fired with it during the competition. He further added that Bindra told him not to reveal this to anybody before the event began.
This isn’t the first time at an Olympics that Bindra has faced issues with his gun. At the 2008 Olympics, there was another incident where his gun was tampered with, just before the final, but at the time he went ahead and delivered a historic gold medal.
Bindra had revealed before this Olympics that he will be retiring from the game after the Rio Olympics. It certainly would have been a fairytale ending had he done so with a medal. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be though, as he fell agonisingly short of a podium finish.
