Vijay holds nerve to hit bull's-eye

Published>Sat, Oct 09 10 06:23 AM

Slowly lifting his right arm to a perpendicular position from his body, the subedar took mock aim in front of the mirror. Although his left hand was tucked inside the comfort of his pocket, the fingers jittered from left to right, causing a wave like movement on the fabric.

He dropped the lid of his right eye to a tight squeeze, before the army man pointed his index finger at the five imaginary targets, which stood 25m away in his mental image. Clicking the pointed finger to his thumb, he imitated the sound of bullets whizzing from a nuzzle, furiously rotating the cuff of his shoulder to follow the sound.

Although it looked like a watered down version of a scene from a Martin Scorsese classic, Vijay Kumar was doing more than just an imitation of Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. He was mentally mapping out his hand-eye co-ordination for the 25m Rapid Fire event at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. While De Niro saw not statues of significance for the role, Vijay's efforts paid instant and golden dividends. For a few minutes after looking into his own reflection, Vijay stared hard at the medal clasped around his left hand. And this time, the fingers didn't shiver.

The nerves had come to a rest the moment he stepped into the wooden floors of the indoor range, as Vijay lined up against his competitors at Karni Singh Shooting Range on Friday. Although Vijay's body posture was no different to that of his opponents, mentally, he had already been there. Having conquered the virtual targets, Vijay picked up the pistol to demolish the real ones.

While his score of 583 in the first stage of the two part event left most of his competitors behind, Malaysia's Amir Hasan Izwan (576) and compatriot Gurpreet Singh (569) clung on like a leech. Despite going into the final round as one angle of a 3-way stand-off, he raced away with near-perfect scores due to his flawless start.

To put things into perspective, Vijay fired a score of 51.88 in the customary practice round before the real event, while the best total achieved by either Gurpreet or Izwan during the actual segment was 50.55. Vijay never dropped below a score of 50 even once in the four rounds to score a total of 787.5, breaking the previous Games record by a mile. The Malaysian (760.3) narrowly pipped out Gurpreet (758.7) for second spot.

Dressed in varying shades of green in the stands, several higher ranked officers from the army watched their junior from Himachal saluting the Indian flag, while wearing his medal proudly around his neck. This was Vijay's third CWG gold (he had won two in Melbourne), his sporting version of the military insignia.

"I am very pleased with this gold, but I still have three more medals to fight for. I cannot rest on my laurels or relax just yet," Vijay said, as screens around the stadium displayed a still image of him in trigger-clasping position. An image thoroughly practiced by the subedar in front of the mirror.

Source: Web Search