Never before in India's Olympic history until 2004 had the country completed a hat-trick of individual olympic medals. Such was the impact of Leander Paes's jinx-breaking bronze in 1996 and Karnam Malleswari's third-place finish in 2000 that the double trap shooter Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore could go a step higher on the podium at Athens 2004. The then 34-year-old soldier from the Indian Army converted his belief into a maiden individual silver medal for India at the Games.


Indian shooting's first major eye-grabbing Olympic moment before that was Anjali Bhagwat qualifying for the final at Sydney 2000. Getting a medal at the Olympic  was a dream yet to be fulfilled, until Rathore, carrying a shotgun on his shoulder, stepped onto the Markopoulo Olympic Shooting Centre in Athens.


"I may have appeared calm inside, but I was dying a thousand deaths out there," Rathore famously quoted back then. In fact, his calmness in the dying moments of the qualifying round and the final earned him the nickname 'Chilly'.