Abhinav Bindra and Twitter users debate over Olympics and support athletes get

Beijing Olympics gold medallist and now ‘former shooter’ Abhinav Bindra had a busy Wednesday evening, engaging in a bitter debate with those who took offence to his statement that to make an Olympics champion India needs to invest far more on infrastructure and training.

Here’s what he said:

His tweet was based on a Guardian UK article which calculated the amount spend to make an Olympic champion in Rio Games. It expectedly fell way short of what India spends to support its athletes.

However, not everyone was impressed by Bindra’s opinion. And thus began Bindra’s impromptu Twitter debate.

Bindra also lunged head first to the rescue of fellow shooter Heena Sidhu.

Bindra also retweeted cricket legend Bishan Bedi to sell his point.

At a point, the debate turned a little ugly, with a user questioning Bindra’s performance in Rio Games and claiming the broken ‘sight’ was nothing but an excuse.

It even appeared the otherwise zen-like Bindra found it difficult to get out of the debate mood, with he even correcting Sachin Tendulkar’s congratulatory tweet to Kidambi Srikanth.

The night, however, though ended on a lighter note, with Bindra, who has announced his retirement from sport, tweeting an article by Virgin that headlined ‘10 reasons why businesses should hire former athletes,’ with this remark: