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| Bindra's mother said he was now India's most eligible bachelor [GALLO/GETTY] |
India is celebrating its first ever individual Olympic gold medal after Abhinav Bindra won gold in the 10-metre air rifle.
The victory ends decades of Olympic underachievement for the world's second most populous nation with the shooter receiving accolades of a nation desperate for Olympic glory, lavish cash rewards and a free lifetime pass to ride the railways.
Indian television news channels were giddy in their coverage, showing footage of Bindra receiving his medal and the raising of the Indian flag on a near continuous loop, interrupted only by interviews with his parents from their home in northern India.
"He's done the country proud, he's done us proud and himself proud," Bindra's mother Babli said, noting that he was now probably the country's most eligible bachelor.
Praise also poured in from India's president and prime minister who hailed his
"golden performance."
Reward rush
India's Madhya Pradesh state announced a prize of 500,000 rupees (US$11,900) for Bindra, while the state of Maharashtra awarded him 1 million rupees (US$23,800) - even though he is not a resident of either. Bihar said it would name a stadium after him.
Not to be outdone, his home state of Punjab awarded him 10 million rupees (US$238,000).
Meanwhile, Lalu Prasad Yadav, the railway minister said Bindra would get a gold pass to go along with his gold medal that would let him and a companion ride the railways free for the rest of his life.
"Bindra's remarkable achievement will inspire other Indian athletes to perform excellently in the remaining parts of the Olympics,'' Yadav said.
Bindra's gold medal ends a long drought for a nation which has never won an individual event before and last won a team gold at the 1980 Moscow Games in men's field hockey, a sport in which it once dominated but did not even qualify for at Beijing.
It is a sporting record that has long been regarded as an embarrassment for India, with its huge population of some 1.1 billion people.
In Athens, India won just one silver, while China, the only other country with a billion-plus population, won 63 medals - 32 of which were gold.
Bindra's father described the win as vindication.
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