Gagan Narang Biography

Gagan Narang, India’s answer to the challenges posed in the international arena of shooting has ensured that the Indian subcontinent ranks amongst the top nations in the sports world of shooting. India’s ace air rifle shooter is the first Indian to bag an individual medal in the current 2012 London Olympics.

He fetched India its first medal -a bronze – in the Men’s 10m Air Rifle event with a final score of 701.1, just a little behind the silver medal winning score of 701.5. This is his third participation in Olympic Games.

Born on 6 May 1983 at Chennai,Tamil Nadu Gagan belongs to a family originally from Panipat in Haryana. The family is now settled in Hyderabad. For his Olympic achievement the Haryana government has announced an award of Rs One Crore for him. The sportsman has been awarded a Padma Shree in 2010. On 29 August 2011, he was awarded the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award – the highest sports award in India-for the year 2010.

The twenty nine year old Gagan Narang, a gold medal winner in the Afro Asian games in 2003, lived up to his promise and was catapulted to fame with success at the 2010 Commonwealth games at New Delhi. He added 4 gold medals to the Indian tally in the Commonwealth games, the only Indian male sportsman to do so in the games. These medals were in the 10m Air Rifle and 50m Rifle 3 positions, individual and pair events.

At the Asian Games in 2010, he had won an individual silver medal. He had won a silver medal for the team event as well, with other Indian shooters Abhinav Bindra and Sanjeev Rajput as part of the Indian team.

Gagan Narang had earlier made the nation proud after winning the coveted gold medal and emerging victorious at the ISSF World Cup in Guangzhou in 2006, and for his quadruple win with four gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in the same year, a feat he replicated in 2010.

He then secured a position in the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and though was unable to make it to any of the final rounds, won a Gold medal in ISSF World Cup final in Bangkok, and in the process created a new world record. This monumental feat elevated his ranking and he soared ahead by leaps and bounds, skipping 18 positions to emerge as the forerunner of international shooting.

Gagan Narang is the third Indian shooter to achieve success in international sport, previously attained by 2004 Olympic Silver medalist Rajyavardhan Rathore, and 2008 Beijing Olympic Gold medalist Abhinav Bindra.