Bull's eye: how Abhinav achieved his target?

Beijing:Shooter Abhinav Bindra made history at the Beijing Olympics on Monday by winning India's first ever individual gold.

Bindra was required to shoot 60 shots and then another 10 to clinch gold and he was pretty much bulls-eye all the way through.

While most of the shooters around him were showing nerves, Bindra appeared his usual self - cool, calm and composed as he approached the qualifiers for the 10 metre air rifle event. Here, is how the shooter achieved his target.

Bindra was on the target from the beginning. He started with a score of 100 and went on to shoot scores of 99, 100, 98, 100 and 99 to finish fourth with a total score of 596.

While nerves got the better of Gagan Narang, who failed to qualify for the finals after falling short in the count-back, Bindra kept his cool as he approached the finals.

He was bang on target from the first round itself with a score of 10.7, the highest in the first round.

Bindra then followed that up with scores of 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.5, 10.5, 10.6, 10.0, 10.2 in the next eight rounds before everything came down to the last shot.

And then finally Bindra did it. He shot a score of 10.8 to take his final tally to 104.5 and his combined tally to 700.5.

Bindra won the cliffhanger by a margin of just eight points ahead of his Chinese competitor, who finished with a total of 699.7.

After Bindra’s victory the national flag went up for the first time for an Indian sportsman and the entire nation celebrated.