Abhinav Bindra

Shoot-offs are always a lottery. Somebody wins, somebody loses.

Even if you do all the right things, it may not ensure that the sponsors line up to support your sport.

Nobody will give a single rupee if you cannot match value in a professional way. For that, you need paid professionals.

It is important to find a way to take sports forward. However, it is important to have certain stipulations in place like restriction in terms of age, tenure etc.

Nothing dramatic can be expected from the Sports Code, because the Olympic Charter has to be respected.

I don't think I was a naturally born talent, surely I had some natural attributes, which perhaps helped me in my sport, but generally speaking I wasn't competitive in nature.

When I was in school, before age 10 I hated any kind of sport.

Growing up, I was not athletic.

After I won in Beijing I chatted with a lot of Indian athletes and they were interested and keen to know what I did. They all thought that I had some sort of secret for success, but I just wanted them to understand and realize that the biggest secret is: there is no secret.

I think we should follow the Olympic charter and the guidelines as the whole world is following it.

We want a clean and effective Olympic body where it can help us and Indian sports to grow and we athletes can represent our country and our flag once again.

A lot needs to be done for Indian sport and with our potential we are nowhere near where we can be.

A pressure situation is not a happy feeling.

Up until Beijing where I had my greatest victory, I had trained for 16 years of life with a singular goal and singular obsession that I wanted to win gold medal at the Olympics.

When I went to Beijing, my goal was to do the best with every shot. The outcome was not important, the process was.

I'm a Kareena Kapoor fan.

I became a process-oriented athlete; one who believed in giving it his best shot and not bothering about the outcome.

It's not wise to just blindly copy what others are doing.

I've not been the most athletic person.

I left my sport when I knew I had nothing more to give.

In shooting, you need to be dumb.

Pressure is a positive thing and it makes no difference on your performance if it is not there.

It's ironic my biggest mental crisis in life came when I actually succeeded. A lot of people talked about dealing with failure, but for me, dealing with success was probably the hardest time in my life.

Performing at the highest level in sports requires adaptability.

The ability to endure and accept hardships became my mantra.

All you need to do is train, train and train. Keep working hard, harder and harder. That's the only thing you need to do.

Absolutely, I think that during a course of my career, I had a long career in sport, I had many ups and downs.

An athlete is not a robot, not a machine. Wellbeing of athletes is absolute necessary.

Once we take care of wellbeing of an athlete then performance will automatically come.

What the people in the country need is meeting of minds between similar philosophy for betterment and well being of people.

The work that I have been doing revolved around prevention of injuries, proper rehabilitation, it revolved around well being and holistic approach.

Shooting is a sport which has got us medals at the highest level in the last five to six years right from 2004. It's a testimony to the talents that we have.

My having won a gold medal in Beijing is not going to be an extra advantage. It does not have any bearing on how I perform in London in a year's time.

In my case it was a sustained effort. I was fortunate to have the backing of my parents to start off with and towards the Beijing Olympics the Mittal Champions Trust came into the picture and they helped me a lot.

To stand up to worldwide competition, we need a very strong set-up at home that produces athletes right from the beginner's level and has the sustained back-up for the same athlete to finally go and win an Olympic medal.

It isn't easy to suffer failure, go through all the pain and the hardship.

When I started at 15, I never thought about winning nine Commonwealth Games medals.

I don't think too far ahead of myself.

I never had a good physical base.

Rio is going to be my fifth Olympic games - it's been a long journey but a rewarding one, I would say.

It was many years ago when I started shooting and I took it up as a complete hobby and a pastime.

Right from my childhood I have been attracted by guns.

It is a big achievement to win a medal at the World Cup. Winning a medal is like doing well at Wimbledon, in tennis. It is one of the biggest shooting competitions in the world.

I have a goal in front of me and that is to achieve a gold medal at the Olympics in air rifle shooting.

I've never been to a disco in my life.

Sport is one part of life. There are so many things to life but I've done nothing. I've really done nothing else but focused on shooting.

I'm quite a loser. I've done nothing in my life for the past 12 years. I'd just eat, sleep, run and do nothing except shooting.

It took a lot out of me to win. But more than anything, when you are goalless, you are listless in your life.

The beauty of having goals in life is that it drives you and when that is lost you lose a lot of meaning in life.

My life's attitude is simple: 'Make the best of what you have got. And move to the next. Thank God for what is coming my way and enjoy it completely.'