Shooter Bindra grabs
hard-won gold in men's 10m air rifle
Xinhua (China Daily 08/25/2008 page14)
The 26-year-old shooter was ranked third with 596
points after the qualification round where Henri Hakkinen
of
As the gold medalist in the 2006 Zagreb World
Championships, Bindra pulled up his slacks from the
beginning of the final, impressing spectators with a 10.7 in the first shot.
Zhu, however, didn't seem to be in good shape,
firing a 9.9 at the third shot and hence plunged to the third.
Hakkinen did a decent job, but Bindra was better.
The Indian, with all his shots above 10 points,
surpassed his Finnish rival after the seventh shot.
His lowest point was the eighth shot, a 10.0, when
Zhu made a 10.6. This lent Chinese spectators a glim
of hope.
But the 24-year-old Chinese Olympic record holder
found his sharpness too late. After the ninth shot, he still had a 0.5-point
gap behind the Indian.
In the breathtaking last shot, Bindra
made a quick fire of 10.8 points to secure the gold.
After the competition, Indian spectators hurrahed
and applauded for the victory.
"It was fantastic," repeated the excited
champion. "A historic moment. I was not thinking too much. I just tried to
shoot well."
After expressing his gratitude to his relatives and
friends, he added, "I didn't expect to make history. I just wanna fly back."
Zhu stared at the big screen with his score, 699.7
points, for quite a while, struggling to hold back his tears.
When he mounted the podium, tears finally fell off
and he wiped.
"I didn't know what was going on, my mind went
blank," he chocked. "I couldn't get focused during the final as I did
in the qualification."
He did well at the first four series of the
six-series qualification with 100 points. A slow shooter, he lost one point in
the fifth series and two in the last as time was up.
Zhu said that he had been under tremendous pressure
before the competition.
"This time was much harder than
"I had been troubled by anxiety and
bewilderment," he continued. "I was the defending champion. I fought
hard with the inner self to get rid of the thoughts...but it was really
hard."
Hakkinen, 28, got a bronze with 699.4 points.
"I am not very happy," said the riflist. "I really had chance maybe after the first
few minutes to win."
In fact, his first nine shots were all above 10,
although under 10.6. He just got a 9.7 in the last shot.
But he said, "It was just a bad game, all
wrong shots."
.Highs and sighs of a dream
By Li Xing (
(China Daily 08/14/2008 page10)
There are a lot of hoorays and sighes
in the office as the most spectacular Olympic Games in history is taking place
right in my home city.
For those of us who don't have time to go out into
the venues, we try to steal minutes away from our desks to watch the
competitions live.
Many of us could have been budding athletes in our
teens, even though we bowed out at the last minute. A former young colleague of
mine was once a teenage swimming champion in
I was also a trainee in volleyball when I was 14.
It was my answer to the call of the late chairman Mao Zedong, for
"promoting physical education to improve the people's constitution".
The middle school sent me to a volleyball training
school. I quit a year later because I couldn't keep a balance with daily
training, school homework and helping my parents with two baby siblings. Had I
stayed there longer, I might have met Lang Ping, the legendary Chinese woman spiker and now a coach for the American women's volleyball
team.
However, watching games live is also trying. There
is too much intensity, such as when the Chinese men's gymnasts were fighting,
apparatus by apparatus, to win the long-coveted Olympics gold medal for the
team event; and when the Chinese men's basketball team was trying to edge out
the Spanish team.
There are disappointments that we should learn to
cope with. It is not easy, because some are simply too hard, such as the
Chinese men's soccer team, whose performance so far has shown little of their
seriousness and stamina in the field.
I couldn't understand why, during their match with
the Belgian team, the Chinese forward should fall at one time when he almost
had the ball in his control, when he was right in front of the Belgian
goalmouth and when only one Belgian defender and the goalkeeper were there
before him.
I was told that the forward was diving for a
violation call to win a corner kick. It is a common tactic, but I don't think
the Chinese forward played it wisely. This blunder only revealed his or the
team's lousiness.
But amidst
all, I am getting a lot of inspiration from the athletes, especially their
determination, their courage and their will. I've heard quite a few of my
colleagues praising the Indian sharp shooter Abhinav Bindra, who won the country's first-ever individual Olympic
title. They say he was so calm that it was simply no surprise that he should
win, even though his closest competitor was the defending champion and Chinese
shooter Zhu Qinan, who was almost equally good.
Above all, I am seeing the Chinese male athletes
are elevating themselves in the sports arena faster, higher and stronger than
their female colleagues, as they are making history in the contemporary Chinese
sports, such as swimmer Zhang Lin, who won the silver medal for 400m freestyle
and fencer Zhong Man, who won the gold for individual
saber, or the men's basketball team, which gave the Spanish team a scare.
I couldn't but marvel at the three Chinese male
archers. They'd never entered the event during the Olympics before, but this
time, they came. They fought hard to challenge the almost invincible South
Korean archers. By comparison, their female colleagues were a little
disappointing, as they didn't battle as hard, even though they were more mature
and experienced.
The Games is going on, and the following lines from
the lyric, "Welcome to
Let's try to challenge ourselves.
Welcome to
If only you keep the courage, miracles will happen.
Abhinav Bindra, hero of India
(China Daily 08/16/2008 page11)
The Indian press hailed the country's first-ever
individual Olympic gold medalist, shooter Abhinav Bindra, calling him the hero of the nation that makes every
Indian feel proud.
According to an AFP report, huge crowds beat drums
to welcome Bindra at
The report noted that Bindra's
gold medal marked a long-waiting dream of
Bindra's success has become the center of public celebration as Indian
politicians lined up to congratulate Bindra on his
return. Those who hailed him included President Pratibha
Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh.
Second medal for India
(China Daily 08/21/2008 page7)
He lost his first-round battle against eventual
silver-medalist Andriy Stadnik,
but during the repechage rounds, he beat three
grapplers on the trot to win the bronze. He becomes the second Indian wrestler
after K. D. Jadhav in the 1952 Helsinki Games to win
an Olympic medal.
***