So what is it that Abhinav Bindra did on Monday to get India its first individual Olympic gold, and in fact the country’s first gold since the 1980 Moscow Olympics? Here go the rules from the Olympic fact sheet: “In the qualification, men shoot 60 shots in 105 minutes and women shoot 40 shots in 75 minutes. The shots are fired in the standing position at 10m from a target with a 10 ring target of only 0.5 mm. The finals consist of 10 shots from the standing position in a time limit of 75 seconds per shot.

“In the qualification... the higher score is awarded when a shot touches the line between two zones. In the finals, eight shooters compete firing shot by shot on command. The 10 rings on the target are sub-divided into ten “decimal” score zones (10.0 to 10.9), the highest score for a shot 10.9. The finals score is added to the qualification score to determine the winner.”

Here’s how small the margin is for error. In the qualifications, Henri Hakkinen led with 598; that is, he missed that dot of a target just twice in 60 shots. Bindra got 596, and at a point less Gagan Narang did not make the finals. Or remember Katerina Emmons. On Saturday she shot right on target all 40 times in the qualifications.

More in store?

Could there be five more medals for India at these Games? In June, PriceWaterhouseCoopers made a projection of six medals, something that would still make the country an “underachiever”. It predicted 88 medals for China and 87 for the United States. This forecast was based roughly on these factors: population; average income levels (GDP per capita at PPP exchange rates); whether the country was at some point part of the Soviet/communist bloc; whether it is the host nation; medal shares in the previous Olympic games.

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