India's Abhinav Bindra pauses between shots during the men's 10m air rifle final at Shooting Range Hall at the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Beijing, yesterday. Bindra won the gold medal. - AP
NEW DELHI (AP):
India celebrated its first ever individual Olympic gold medallist yesterday, offering the shooter the accolades of a nation desperate for Olympic glory, lots of cash and a free lifetime pass to ride the railways.
Abhinav Bindra won gold in the 10-metre air rifle, ending decades of Olympic misery for India, the world's second most populous nation and a perennial underachiever at the Games.
Television news channels were giddy in their coverage, showing footage of Bindra receiving his medal and the raising of the Indian flag on a continuos loop, interrupted only by interviews with his parents from their home in northern India.
"He's done the country proud, he's done us proud and himself proud," Bindra's mother Babli told the CNN-IBN news channel, noting that he was now probably the country's most eligible bachelor.
Praise poured in from India's president and prime minister who hailed his "golden performance".
It seemed almost everyone wanted to be associated with him.
India's Madhya Pradesh state announced a prize of 500,000 rupees (US$11,900) for Bindra, while the state of Maharashtra awarded him one million rupees (US$23,800) - even though he is not a resident of either. The impoverished state of Bihar said it would name a stadium after him.
Not to be outdone, his home state of Punjab awarded him 10 million rupees (US$238,000).
Meanwhile India's charismatic Railway Minister Lalu Prasad announced that Bindra would get a gold pass to go along with his gold medal - letting him and a companion ride the railways (in the first class, air conditioned compartments) free for the rest of his life.
"Bindra's remarkable achievement will inspire other Indian athletes to perform excellently in the remaining parts of the Olympics," Prasad said.
Bindra's gold medal ended a long drought for India which has never won an individual event before and last won a team gold at the 1980 Moscow Games in men's field hockey, a sport in which it once dominated but did not even qualify for at Beijing.
