A Shot at History
autobiographical work by Abhinav Bindra

A Shot at History: My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold is 2011 autobiography of Indian 2008 Summer Olympics Gold medalist Abhinav Bindra. He won the medal in the 10-metre air rifle category, which made him India's first ever individual gold medalist; this victory came after he received the seventh rank at the 2004 Athens Olympics. However, due to Bindra's inexperience in writing, he co-authored the book with sportswriter Rohit Brijnath, which took them two years to complete. After it was released on October 20, 2011, at nationwide stores by Harpercollins, Union Sports minister Ajay Maken formally released the book on October 27, 2011, at a function in New Delhi. The book's subsequent Bangalore release in November 2011 was done by Rahul Dravid and went on to receive good reviews.
Synopsis
In this book, Bindra tells that only hunger for success and inner desire helps anyone to achieve his or her dreams. He denies that only the best training, coaches can lead to anyone's success. In this book, he tells how various coaches helped him to become a professional shooter. Especially, he gives credit to his German coach Gabriele Bühlmann, who helped him to win a gold medal after finishing 7th in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens which he states as "the darkest hour in his career". He says that how he drew inspiration from shooters like Gagan Narang, Samaresh Jung, Jaspal Rana and Anjali Bhagwat.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16959950. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2008 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Shot at History” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.