‘Time to pass on baton to younger generation’

Indian sport’s Golden Boy Abhinav Bindra said “it was easy” to move on from competitive shooting as he called time on his distinguished career, here on Sunday.

Shooter Bindra, who competed in his fifth and last Olympic Games in Rio, said it was time to pass on the baton to the younger generation.

“It’s easy. It’s actually nice because that’s the way I am,” said the 2008 Beijing Games gold medallist when asked of his retirement. “I like to struggle and I have to start from scratch. So it’s wonderful, I feel like a 13-year-old trying to learn how to shoot. But it is good and that’s the way it should be.

“It is time to move on and hand over the baton to the younger generation,” said Bindra, who finished fourth in Rio in the 10 metre air rifle event. “I think fourth place was a great closure to my career.”

Heading the five-member review committee to probe the shooters’ Rio Olympics debacle, Bindra said his sole interest is in paving the way to a better future rather than look into the past.

“It is a very big task especially because you can never break performance into black and white, there will always be grey and that’s the nature of sport. I am the first to acknowledge that so I am not quite interested to look into the performance of the athletes and how prepared they were because that is the matter of past,” he said.

“I have actually recused myself from the whole interview process because I thought that would be unfair on my part because I was part of the same team.

“What I am personally more interested is to set up frameworks, systems and protocols which could perhaps helps us to govern sports, organise the sport of shooting and also the whole role of managing performance, monitoring performance and athlete preparation in a more systematic manner.”

After ruling the shooting range for more than a decade, Bindra, who will soon turn 34, is now keen to earn a living out of business that deals with “fitness, medical and high performance side of sports”.

“I am trying to earn a living. I am involved in business, trying to earn a living, put food on the plate. Well I am interested in sport but sport you know is not going to give me much money. I am involved in certain things, which is to do with fitness, medical side, and I am also trying to do something on high performance side of sport,” Bindra added.