Growing up in Harsour village in the foothills of the Himalayas,shooting was nowhere on the horizon for Vijay Kumar. The nearest shooting range was in fact 500 km away. The journey from Harsour to London is even further,and not just in miles. It would take eight ardous years before his journey culminated on Friday with a silver at the Olympics. Kumar first picked the pistol as a 18-year-old when he joined the Army as a jawan. He could have chosen the more popular rifle but he chose the pistol. He wanted a weapon he could train with ease for the long hours he planned to put in. He proved to be a natural,winning his first gold - in the team event - at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. A silver at the World Championship in Beijing in 2009 followed. At home,at the Delhi CWG,he pocketed three golds and a silver. On Friday,Kumar,now a subedar,added a Olympic medal in the 25 m rapid fire pistol event. Kumar qualified for the 25 m rapid fire final with a score of 585 and was placed fourth,six points behind leader Alexei Klimov of Russia who shot a world record score. But in the finals,when the six shooters start from scratch as they begin the first of eight series,Kumar kept his nerve while others around him lost theirs. He found each of the five targets with his first series. He got a slice of luck in the fourth series,on which the first of the shooters is eliminated,shooting just three. Fortunately only one other shooter,the Cuban Leuris Pupo,who would win gold,shot better. As the shooters got eliminated,Kumar stayed firm. He never got the perfect five targets but did enough to stay in the hunt. A four in the sixth series assured him a bronze. Another four in the seventh took him to silver. The 26-year-old from Himachal Pradesh found the target 30 times out of 40 attempts in the series comprising eight rounds of five shots each. Besides beating back the challenge of world champion Klimov,Kumar also stayed ahead of the Chinese duo of Ding Feng and Zhang Jian and German Christian Reitz in the 40-shot final to finish runner-up in a thrilling finale behind Cubas Leuris Pupo,who shot his way to the gold with a world record-equalling score of 34.
