Olympic gold medallists on learning to live with pressure
Neeraj Chopra points to an increased interest in sport in rural areas despite lack of stadiums and coaches; Abhinav Bindra highlights the need to build a true sporting culture in India
NEW DELHI: When a 25-year-old Abhinav Bindra hit that golden number — a 10.8 — with his last shot in 10m air rifle at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and turned around, his face barely registered any emotion. A fist pump, followed by a blank look of sheer exhaustion. Just looking at him, it would have been impossible to say that he had just won India’s first individual Olympic gold medal. It was his third Olympics, his third attempt at a childhood goal (the first came in 2000 when he was just 17).
Thirteen years later, at the Tokyo Olympics, Neeraj Chopra strode into the Olympic Stadium on the night of August 7 with a swagger and a smile that suggested that he was made for the big stage. It was his first Olympics, but he had already built quite the reputation. He flung his javelin like a gladiator, flexing his muscles and letting out a roar. As the javelin flew, another dream became reality: Chopra had won India’s first medal in athletics at the Olympics, and only the second individual gold after Bindra.
The only two Olympic gold medallists from India came together at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Wednesday, for an engrossing conversation on their journeys, the way forward, and the things that drove them to success.
“I cannot be satisfied because I have won a gold medal,” Chopra, 23, said. “I have time on my side. Sportspersons ka dimag kuch ulta hota hai (sportspeople think a little differently). Yes, I have won gold, but I won’t leave any stone unturned to win another gold, to better my distance, to go for an Olympic record. I have to improve my strength, work on my technique and go beyond 90m. I have been chasing that for some time now, but I lost one year because of injury and then one year because of Covid.”
Chopra’s best throw, 88.07m, came this year at the Asian Games, where he won gold and rewrote his own national record.
“Neeraj, what is better than one gold? Bindra said, smiling. “Two gold medals!”
For Chopra’s journey ahead, Bindra, when asked by the thrower, offered some important advice.
“There will always be pressure,” Bindra said. “Many athletes try to run away from pressure and make their own strategies to not feel pressured. Reality is different. You will go to Paris with so many expectations, pressure will be there.
There is a human tendency to resist pressure, but you cannot do that. It will make your job tougher. Accept that there will be pressure and find ways to coexist with pressure.
“Yes, I have been to five Olympics, but every time, I was a different individual. My body, attitude, mindset, technique, were different. The mistake we make is that we repeat the same things when we are doing good. Never be afraid of getting out of your comfort zone. Tiger Woods changed his swing at his peak. We have to keep pushing.”
Chopra said that despite winning a medal on his Olympic debut, he has no problem motivating himself because “in our sport, we have something extra, something more than an Olympic gold and that’s the distance we can throw. You can keep shifting your goal, keep working with distance.”
At the Games in Tokyo, Chopra showed great spirit when he had egged on Germany’s Johannes Vetter — his fiercest rival, the runaway favourite going into the event and someone who has multiple 90m plus throws to his name — encouraging him to do better when Vetter was struggling during the qualifying round.
“If I sit hiding in some corner and hoping he does not throw well, it won’t make any difference,” Chopra said. “He will still throw what he has to throw. It’s much better to encourage each other. Vetter was egging me on too. My encouragement may not make any difference to his throws either, but it makes me feel good.”
It’s a deep camaraderie that exists in athletics, Chopra said. “You should see the pole vaulters, they are even more involved with each other. If Mondo Duplantis (world record holder and reigning Olympic champion) clears a big height, his rivals will come and hug him. You can look at sports two ways: you can see it as winning or losing, or you can see it as something you enjoy, something that gives you joy. Good to be with that joy and let the winning or losing happen automatically.”
Bindra could not agree more, for him, sports was about the journey and the relationships he forged along the way. He hardly ever thinks back about the day he won the Olympic gold, he said.
“My journey of 22 years in sports was so much more than that one day or that one medal hanging on my wall,” Bindra said.
“Sports allowed me to have a wonderful relationship with my mother who travelled with me as a 12-year-old when I went to Germany to train. “It allowed me to spend a lot of time with my father, to build beautiful relationships with other shooters and coaches and it taught me discipline and certain values that I will always live by.”
One thing that both Bindra and Chopra hoped would change, as a result of their achievements, is the sporting culture of India.
“I think things are already changing,” Chopra said. “Yes, we don’t have enough stadiums, at the rural level there aren’t enough stadiums or coaches and that’s where the athletes come from, but there is definitely a lot more interest.”
Bindra added that thinking about sports at the elite level was not enough.
“Elite sport is a small number, we need to build the opportunity for many young people to play and to enjoy it,” he said. “Sport can play a very important role in defining a nation.
We are very addicted to the soft power that winning medals at international competitions bring, but what I am interested in is the real power of sports, of the way it teaches you values, of how to lose, how to win, how to live.”