Abhinav Bindra’s epic swansong would have ended in crowning glory, but for a matter of millimetres

Farewell, Abhinav Bindra, India’s great Olympian, flag bearer and above all, gun thinker.

It is all about millimetres, but the nature of the 10 metre air rifle qualification can be a bit antiseptic. It is a prolonged exertion, and even procession, of loading, re-loading and concentration, in timeless cycles, always obsessed with millimetres. The same routine shot after shot after shot.

In the line up of 60 shooters, Gagan Narang, at the 17th position, and Bindra, at the 28th, shot just a few metres apart. In the opening rounds, the former excelled, but then dropped, rapidly, and almost with a mundane finality, out of contention for the finals. Bindra lingered at the 12th spot, slowly creeping up the table, engaged in a dogfight with Hungary’s Peter Sidi.

Going into the last series, the 33-year-old gold medallist from Beijing needed an injection of brilliance to ensure a place in the finals. He loaded his rifle, swung his neck to the right, stared straight for two seconds, turned in slow motion to the left, put his head down on the rifle and shot. It’s a routine that he has perfected over many gun-obsessed years.

Bindra shot 10.8 thrice – the maximum score in the 10 metre air rifle is 10.9. Those were near-perfect shots. The sensory triggering, the rifle stability, the body balance, the approaching target, and finding the centre – it was all there, eliciting huge cheers from the delegation of the National Rifle Association of India and its president Raninder Singh, the cheerleader-in-chief.

Shoot, rinse, repeat

Bindra just stood, motionless, next to his German coach Heinz Reinkemeier. Watching Bindra is strangely mesmerising. He is straight-faced and composed, cocooned in his sporting bubble. He is a gun-wielder and a gun-thinker. There is no hyperbole to his words, no sense of extravaganza or exuberance to his routines. That, though, never obfuscated his yearning for success. In Rio de Janeiro, the self-proclaimed lobby shooter with a crippled spine wanted a medal.

Bindra began the final slowly. He scored 29.9 from the first series of three shots and 60.1 after the second series, ranking fifth. Italy’s Niccolo Canpriani led the field after some phenomenal shooting.

And so, with a sizable contingent of Indian fans in the stands of the Deodoro shooting range – which Bindra had recreated at his home farm in Chandigarh in his quest for perfection in the build-up to the competition – in a surcharge of electricity and unclear noise in the hall came the denouement of the 33-year-old’s long career: one last aim for glory. Consecutive scores of 10.7 propelled him to a second spot, but a disappointing 9.7 on his sixth shot heralded difficulty. He then tied with Ukraine’s Serhiy Kulish at 163.8. A shoot-out would now decide the bronze medal.

Sport at its most cruel

For one last time, Bindra went through his ice cool routine. You could hear the rifle spit out its pellet, making that clicking sound. He released the trigger, the pellet left the barrel. Now, India’s greatest shooter could do no more, as the pellet travelled 10 metres through the dense Deodoro air, irrevocably and irrefutably seeking its target, the centre with a diameter of 0.5 mm.

Then, as the pellet hit the bullseye, the 33-year-old experienced sport at its most cruel. He had hit 10 in the shootout, but his Ukranian opponent scored 10.5. The veteran did not shake his head in dismay as he had done when he hit 9.7. The bronze medal had eluded him, a swan song without crowning glory.

As he walked through the mixed zone for the compulsory media chat, his body language betrayed deep disappointment. Cordially, he spoke of “a better result, but a good end to his career”. Then, in a blink of an eye, he was gone. It was India’s last glimpse of the shooter at the greatest stage of them all. At last, the great champion, his legend inexorably attached to an August day in Shijingshan in Beijing when he won that historic gold in 2008, has fired his final shot.