Home On The Range

Chander Suta Dogra August 25, 2008 00:00 IST Home On The Range -0001-11-30T00:00:00+05:53

Winning an Olympic gold is all about skill, passion, single-mindedness. It’s also about money. Especially if you have to depend on your own resources for expensive equipment and training, not on your country’s creaking sports facilities. And Abhinav Bindra is lucky to have the requisite class background—his father, Dr A.S. Bindra, heads the Rs 500-crore Hi Tech group of industries. The family’s wealth ensured Abhinav had all that he needed to help him accomplish the Olympian feat of bagging a gold in Beijing.

Father Bindra admits candidly, "Abhinav is not a product of the Indian sports system. Of course, he’s today the nation’s son, but it would have been difficult for him to accomplish all this without the family’s wealth—to meet the expenses of foreign coaches and physiotherapists, the special rifles and other equipment. I’ve even made a Rs 1 crore Olympic-standard, fully-airconditioned shooting range on this estate for him to practise in."

The estate Bindra Sr is talking about is a 13-acre sprawl housing their...