Narang had made it to the finals with an impressive qualifying score. Bindra who made the entire country proud by winning the first ever gold medal in the individual category in 2008 couldn’t defend his title but Narang was still in the reckoning. India’s only individual Olympic gold medallist Bindra failed to qualify as he shot 594 to finish 16th out of 47 contestants. There was a ray of hope as Narang lived up to the expectations in the qualifying round. As Indian athletes failed one after another at the London Games 2012, Gagan Narang rose to the occasion as he shot bronze in the 10m Air Rifle event. The Hyderabad based marksman scored 598 points which got him the third spot, just a point behind the number one and two qualifiers – World No. 1 Niccolo Campriani of Italy and Romania`s Moldoveanu Alin George who both came up with an Olympic-record equalling 599. Narang finished with a 10.3 and then a 10.7 to snatch a bronze medal away from China`s Wang Tao. It was a relief for the man who had narrowly missed a medal at the Beijing Games. As the crowd cheered for Abhinav Bindra at the Beijing Games, Narang stood in utter disappointment having missed the podium by the margin of one point. This time he made sure that he didn’t go through a similar experience. He came up with a formidable performance and defeated the best in the business to end India’s drought at 2012 Olympics. Narang’s seventh and eighth shot produced scores of 9.9 and 9.5 but he bounced back to seal the bronze with impressive scores of 10.3 and 10.7. The 29-year-old fell two short of his world record score of 600. The man from Hyderabad is the only shooter to have shot a possible 600 twice. No Indian could have enough of Gagan Narang on Monday. They milled around him, pulled him, shook his hand; an Indian fan even hugged him and burst into tears. But it was a composed Narang who put his medal in perspective at the media briefing moments later. "Every final is unpredictable, anything can happen," he said, pointing at the pressure he went through. "There's pressure at a World championship, Asian Games or Commonwealth Games but Olympics is always the top. Yes, I'm relieved as this is the only medal I did not have. An Olympic medal is an Olympic medal. It's a huge stone off my chest." When told that his coach was not happy enough and was expecting gold, he said: "I have to agree with the coach," smiling at the ailing Kazakh who came out of the hospital to help him get ready. "I have two more events to go so I'm not done yet - I'm looking forward to the 3-prone event." Narang admitted he made a technical mistake in the third series during qualification, when he dropped two points. "Scoring 600 is always challenging but I made mistakes. No complaints, no looking back."