ROHIT BRIJNATH
The athlete as backwards prophet is the fashion. What would you tell your younger self, we ask? Write a letter to him, please. And so greying, considered heroes give wise advice to the reckless, obsessive, dynamic creatures they once were.
He, the Olympic champion, isn’t the looking-back kind. But we want to examine the bones of athletic journeys and younger athletes want to peer down the roads he walked. And this is when he’ll say repeatedly that yes, sure, he reached several goals yet he “failed miserably”.
Failed?
In “achieving my fullest potential?” But wait, what was the problem?
“My lack of balance.”
Abhinav Bindra is talking about something beyond just mere winning. About winning well. About courage of a form we don’t always acknowledge. Courage to take days off, to do less, to not be consumed by sport, to not get imprisoned in the unhealthy grip of competition.
“Why did I have self-doubt?” he says. “Because all my eggs were in one basket. Because my self-worth depended on where my name was in the ranking list. I didn’t have the courage to let go.”
“My most successful years, in terms of quality, were in the US in 2001 when I was a student-athlete. I had only so many hours to train. I was challenged intellectually, I was challenged outside the field of play. I went on hikes. Even if I didn’t win in Athens (Olympics, 2004), I was at my best then. And it was because of balance. If everything rests on one pillar and there’s an earthquake, everything shakes.”
Then he became obsessive, his life a narrow pursuit of gold, and ironically it’s what he got. But if he stayed balanced, could he have been even better? A career never answers every question.
It’s 16 years since Bindra won 10m air rifle gold in Beijing and since it’s Olympic
year, he’s a fair subject for another interrogation. After all, he’s not the athlete I knew. He has a taste for occasional Vesper martinis—shaken, of course—but, to put it politely, there’s nothing much else about him which says James Bond. Except the weapon. The last gun he has left from 22 years of shooting is a gold rifle presented to him by Walther, the gun-maker to 007. The other guns have gone, some pellets remain and a few jackets. His athletic skin has been shed. Now he’s someone who used to be talented.
Singer Jon Bon Jovi recently spoke about buying back his first guitar. Then he played it, for it’s what musicians do. But athletes let go. Exhausted and played out, they don’t look back. They might clutch on to a little memorabilia, as Rahul Dravid has with a few bats and gloves, but as the Indian cricket coach said, they’re “in some boxes that I haven’t opened in years”.
But didn’t he, batting engineer, ever step back into the nets, just you know to remember the sound and sensation of timing? Like strumming an old guitar?
“Never hit a ball in the nets after I stopped,” he replied.
Athletes often stay in sport, in some form, for it’s all they know. Dravid turned mentor. Bindra works with the International Olympic Committee on mental health and in safeguarding athletes from harassment and abuse, sits on the board of Bajaj Auto and has opened 15 hi-tech centres, some used for athletic