IndiaPost.com - Abhinav working on roadmap to prepare other athletes

NEW DELHI: India's first-ever Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra is working on a roadmap to prepare other athletes to scale similar heights in future. "I am working now on a structure which I can be directly involved with for the development of other shooters and athletes.

I will actually try and groom people for the future. I am in the process of starting off with a shooting plan," he told PTI. "I will give more details on that when I have finalized the plan and things are a bit more concrete," he said.

The ace marksman, who has won the prize money over Rs 50 million while rewards are still pouring on, said he would also use a portion of his winner's purse for the development of the Olympic sports in the country.

"I have not planned how to use it but I will certainly spend a portion of it on the development of Olympic Sports in the country," said Abhinav. Abhinav knows his Olympic gold medal is precious than any amount of yellow metal in the possession of other Indians and wants to be heard when his views count.

He also wants to "actually go out there" for the greater good of Indian sports. "I want to use this time now when people are willing to listen to my opinion for the greater good of Indian sport and actually go out there and make a difference," said the ace marksman, who won the honor in 10 meter air rifle event at Beijing earlier this month.

"I would like to give back to not only shooting but also to the whole Indian sport movement. I would like to offer my help to all who seek it and also like to be available to other shooters so that I can share my experience with them," Abhinav said.

The 25-year-old Chandigarh shooter said India's feat of three Olympic medals -- one gold and two bronze -- in the 2008 Games was especially phenomenal as it came without any sporting infrastructure.

"For the usual comment about how India underperforms... it is very simple... We don't have any sport structure whatsoever... So the fact that we are even winning a couple of medals is phenomenal... It is time we all join hands and try and change this acceptance of mediocrity.

"I think we should all be positive and actually offer solutions since it is pretty obvious we all know the problems. "It is important that we do this in a team effort where the more the merrier and only when we all join hands can there be a change for the better in the Indian system," he added. Coming back on to his performance at Beijing, Abhinav admitted it was tough to survive the pressure at the biggest stage but said it was not a turning point in his life.