er the task of the athlete who competes only against himself. If you play directly against someone else (i.e. tennis), you need to perform only to a level high enough to beat that person. You can play at 80 per cent and win. You can be imperfect. In shooting, he competes against an entire cast of char

EUGENE, Ore. -- Washington receiver Dante Pettis was succinct in his assessment of quarterback Jake Browning.Ridiculously good, Pettis said after Browning threw for 304 yards and a school-record six touchdowns in a 70-21 rout of Oregon on Saturday night.The victory snapped the No. 5 Huskies 12-game losing streak to the Ducks and left Browning -- who also ran for a pair of scores -- wanting more.Well take a win no matter what but yeah, its kind of cool. Seventy-seven wouldve been cool, too. The more points you can score the better, Browning said.Myles Gaskin ran for 197 yards and a touchdown for the undefeated Huskies, who have won nine straight games going back to last season. Pettis caught eight passes for 134 yards and two touchdowns, while John Ross had nine catches for 94 yards and three scores.Brownings eight touchdowns matched the Pac-12 single-game record. Washingtons 70 points were the most the team had scored since the 1944 season.Everybody is going to talk about the yards and touchdowns, but I was just doing my job, going through my reads, Browning said. I dont think there was anything outside of what I was supposed to do.Freshman Justin Herbert made his first college start and threw for 179 yards and two touchdowns for the Ducks, who continued their dramatic slide with a fourth straight loss. Oregon (2-4, 0-3 Pac-12) hadnt lost four straight since the 2006 season.The 70 points that Oregon allowed were the second-most in school history, one shy of a 71-7 loss at Texas in 1941.Herbert was intercepted on his first pass of the game, and Washington went on to score on the ensuing series on Brownings 1-yard touchdown run.Washington (6-0, 3-0) upped the lead on Brownings 3-yard TD pass to Ross. Rose also scored on a 15-yard pass from Browning as the Huskies built a 28-0 lead. Browning scored on a 7-yard keeper to put Washington ahead 35-7 at the end of the first half.Pettis caught touchdown passes of 10 and 28 yards as the Huskies built a 63-21 lead in the opening minutes of the final quarter.We dont really focus on the past, we try to focus on the present, but theres a lot of people back home who really, really wanted this so it feels good, Pettis said.A local prospect out of Eugenes Sheldon High School, Herbert is the first true freshman to start for the Ducks since Chris Miller in 1983. Graduate transfer Dakota Prukop started at quarterback in the Ducks first five games.Its like a broken record but we just have to keep getting after it, said Oregon defensive coordinator Brady Hoke. Thats the only way to fix it.POLL IMPLICATIONSThe decisive victory in a hostile setting -- and the end of that 12-game losing streak -- should reassure any doubters of Washingtons place in the top 10, although Oregon is clearly struggling this season. It was the Ducks worst loss (margin-wise) since they fell 63-0 at Nebraska in 1985.TAKEAWAYSOregon: Despite his obvious inexperience and that initial interception, Herbert showed potential. At one point in the first half he followed up a pump fake with a flip pass to tight end Pharaoh Brown. The issue for the Ducks continues to be the defense, which allowed the Huskies 682 yards in total offense.Washington: The Huskies with Browning continue to be an offensive force, completely dominating Oregons re-tooled D under Hoke.KEY INJURY: Oregon was without senior receiver Dwayne Stanford with an undisclosed injury. He was third on the team with 13 catches for 175 yards and a touchdown. In his honor, Brown wore his No. 88 jersey against the Huskies. When Brown was injured in 2014, Stanford wore his No. 85 jersey.Oregon running back Royce Freeman may have been injured during the game. Freeman ran for 50 yards but didnt play in the second half.QUOTABLE: Im just glad I dont have to talk about the streak, or have to answer that. Thats probably the No. 1 thing Ive been asked since the day I got to Seattle. Thats why Im really happy, so I dont have to answer that question, Washington coach Chris Petersen said.UP NEXTWashington: The Huskies return home for a bye next week before hosting Oregon State on Oct. 22Oregon: The Ducks also get a bye next weekend before a Friday night game on Oct. 21 in Berkeley.---AP college football website: collegefootball.ap.orgLeo Komarov Islanders Jersey . -- Jakob Silfverberg is making himself right at home with the Anaheim Ducks, scoring four goals in his first four games. Thomas Greiss Islanders Jersey . Coach Tom Thibodeau says the former MVP will probably start travelling with the team in the next few weeks. Rose tore the meniscus in his right knee at Portland in November and was ruled out for the remainder of the season by the Bulls. http://www.islanderssale.com/authentic-thomas-hickey-islanders-jersey/ . Calgary scored on the first shift, and Michael Cammalleri scored twice as the Flames cruised to a 5-2 win over the Washington Capitals on Saturday. Denis Potvin Islanders Jersey . -- Gus Malzahn finally had his day in Fayetteville. Andrew Ladd Jersey .Y. -- The Buffalo Sabres have recalled forward Kevin Porter and defenceman Chad Ruhwedel from the minors as part of a five-player roster shuffle made by the NHLs worst team.It happened just for a single second. In Rio in April, just for this fragment of time, he was his old self. His old, high-strung, nothings-good-enough, pushing-himself, perfection-demanding, obsession-embracing, brilliant self.Hed shot 626.2 in the air rifle in a World Cup test event, which is 10.4 per shot, which in the previous scoring system would roughly translate to 598/600, which is by any measure a pretty, decent score.Well, for most people. But since when was Abhinav Bindra, in his old self, most people?And so when Gaby Buhlmann, one of his coaches, walks by, and hes standing there with that very Bindra look which is all inconsolable fury, and she asks him about the scoresheet that hes holding, he says this:Its toilet paper.Crap score.Unworthy.Pitiful.If you wanted an introduction to driven and be acquainted with desire, then you had to meet Bindras old self. Under his skin, desperation crawled. Hed examine every pellet of hundreds under a magnifying glass in case one had a flaw. Because he couldnt afford a flaw. Because he was in pursuit of only the flawless. Hed unlock his range at 3am, in his underwear, because a brilliant idea had struck him, and dont raise that eyebrow. How else does perfection come?His old self had coaches who tuned his focus and tightened his technique and grew him up, but no one needed to kindle his flame. When he told me, years ago, about the time he shot 600/600 six times in practice and wasnt happy, even I, whod read enough on eccentricity and sport, thought, Dear God, who is this?But that old self, its mostly gone, its broken apart. Only slivers of it remain, only remnants left behind of a younger man, only pieces which show up now and then for a second.Because in the next second he corrects himself.Its not toilet paper.His score is not crap, he reminds himself. Its impressive. Its a score to be respected. To be grateful for. His old, hard self took him to Olympic gold in 2008 but no athlete, no human, can stay the same. His old self was too hard to maintain and so he keeps reinventing himself, challenging himself, invigorating himself, discovering himself. He doesnt just experiment with shooting, hes turned himself into a shooting experiment.He has kept trying to reshape himself, to be less anxious, less negative, less hard on himself. Till here he is, at the cusp of his fifth Games, a Games which has tested him, ruined him, fuelled him, made him and now to this Games he says goodbye. Hes like a bullet that has travelled too far. Hes not going back.I have less shots left.And no more Olympics.***Bindra and I have history. Actually a book, his book, titled A Shot at History. The writing of it made us, him 33 now, me 53, friends. We text now and then. We talk politics. I tell him he needs to be less boring if he wants to get married. He laughs. Hes switchblade sharp and too wise for his age. He was the right sportsperson to do a book with -- and any journalist who reads this will grin like hell -- because he was always on time. The business of athletes, who are creatures of exquisite timing on the field, is to be late for everything off the field --- as if to be on time reflects an unnecessary enthusiasm for an interview. Its not that no one told Bindra this, its merely that hes his own unflinching man.Between 2009 and 2011, we meet 4-5 times in Delhi, once in Chandigarh, twice in Singapore. Sometimes for eight hours a day. If I write him an email -- 322 in 2010 alone -- hell reply within 24 hours, whatever time zone hes in. If I call and he doesnt pick him, hell call back after practice. When Im in Delhi, I ask, What time do you want to start tomorrow?You say.9am?Fine.At 9am, hes there. No bleary-eyed, phone-to-ear, Ill-be-with-you-shortly look. Instead hes scrubbed, dressed, shoes polished, pants with creases as sharp as the parting in his hair. Coffee? Breakfast? He wears muted colours and also an almost unfashionable, self-deprecating, respectful politeness.Hes a shooter, a stationary and hushed hero and so you dont expect an aura, but hes an Olympic champion, a world champion, hes great, hes somebody, yet he carries it all calmly -- unpretentiously but gravely. Hes not the guy for the stupid question. Dont ask him, Oh, how many shots are there in shooting? Just dont. He wont be rude, he simply wont be interested in you because you havent respected him by doing your homework. He takes shooting seriously, so take him seriously.His phone is off. No sister, friend, sponsor interrupts. Hell talk as long as I want to talk. An air-conditioner hums and my pen scratches. This is incredibly hard for him for hes not a man of words. In another life he could have been a caver, or a deep sea diver, for he lives in silence, a loner, whose grand journeys are into the unknown depths of his own self.Hes incredibly shy, hes private, yet hes parting curtains because hed agreed to that beforehand. Agreed that we were not going to make money with this book. We get it, its a shooting book. And we dont help either with sales because hes too awkward to tweet about it and I am not on Twitter. But we dont care about that. Also he has no private life, no Bollywood girlfriend, no model on his arm, not found frequently on Page 3. He doesnt even have a fast car and a frothing father, hes just terrifyingly normal, hes the un-Agassi. But we dont care about that either. We only care about writing a raw, honest, gritty investigation into his single-minded, desperate, eccentric, devoted pursuit of his greatest sporting self. Not a how-to-win book but a how-he-won book.So he opens himself up, he peels his skin away. He talks about pain, crying, whining, defeat, perseverance, learning, courage, acting. He talks about officials who do nothing, about 10-day silent retreats to improve concentration, about climbing a pizza pole. He talks about how Olympic defeat sent him to therapy and how Olympic victory brought on a depression. He never cuts corners in shooting, he wont for tthis.ddddddddddddHe doesnt know how.For a writer, this is a pleasure. Most of our lives were herded in and out of interviews, offered canned answers, expected to dissect greatness in nine minutes. There are always questions left to ask, but here, with him, there are none. Here I have an Olympic champion to whom I can ask anything for however long. Its a two-year tutorial in sporting desire.But I also, inadvertently, do him a minor favour because he concedes that all this talking liberates him. It softens his suspicion of the outside world, it peels away some of his insularity, and he even tells me some weeks ago that hes now more patient with journalists and understands our jobs better. Of course, Ive always been nice to them, he says. I think hes grinning as he talks. I roll my eyes.When he had to make speeches at symposiums, hed be edgy, practicing before the mirror for weeks, timing himself, but now hes less ruffled. I dont agonize any more. I like doing conversation-styled events. I am brutally honest in them and try to be funny. People relate to honesty. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation, which supports emerging athletes, hes doing workshops with young shooters and even giving away rifles. Last year 10 of them, one to a Paralympian.Hes a man who has unfolded wings he never knew he had.***Shooting is a subtle, complex activity involving slow-motion movements and pellets that fly too fast to see. You can see the footballer feint, turn, accelerate but here there is an invisible beauty, the control of the heartbeat, the muscles, tiny and large, activating to ensure balance, the search for stability. Its pursuit is terrifying simple: Perfection. Press your pen to paper. It leaves a dot. Thats roughly the bullseye in the 10m air rifle. Now hit it 60 times.We are drawn, mostly, to sports which are popular, whose stars beckon us, whose history is rooted in our lands, whose movement fascinates us. Shooting does not qualify. It is not a rite of passage nor a spectacle. And yet to talk with Bindra, and watch him practice, is to be led within shooting, inside its skin, to appreciate the delicacy of its craft (the dilemma of when to trigger) and to fathom in a moving world the challenge of stillness. This is sport, too.He taught me how coldly punitive shooting is when it comes to the human error. The cost of the tiny mistake is in fact inhuman. Its not enough for him to hit the .5mm bullseye because his score will be determined by how close he is to the centre of that .5mm bullseye.He made me understand better the task of the athlete who competes only against himself. If you play directly against someone else (i.e. tennis), you need to perform only to a level high enough to beat that person. You can play at 80 per cent and win. You can be imperfect. In shooting, he competes against an entire cast of characters all at once, a 50-strong, high-class field whose skill he cant control or affect. He cannot play within himself. He cannot play just well enough. He cannot raise his game when it matters on a big shot because every shot is big. He has to give everything of himself to every single pellet fired.He offered a nuanced explanation of the idea of control, for in shooting it involves a suffocation of emotion. No reaction to a 10, none to a 9, each score worn, swallowed, moved on from, perfection shrugged at, imperfection forgotten, no rage allowed, no vocal whine, no high five (with whom), no uppercut of the air. Everyone suffers and all in equal silence.And Bindra is still suffering. He always suffers. He cant not suffer because it would mean he doesnt care. Hes just suffering less. Hes done what he had to which is to give shooting his entire being. He didnt lean on his 2008 Olympic gold, but he put aside one masterpiece and started on another canvas. And yet even as his journey isnt defined by this gold -- but by his patience, his learning, his constancy, his willingness to experiment, his medals elsewhere -- it gives his journey a particularly fine glint.He, the young boy who loved the smell of gun oil, whose parents supported his dream and bore his boyish tantrums, whose solitary personality fit this lonely sport, is proud of where hes travelled as a shooter. But its a quiet pride for he wears his uniqueness -- first Indian to win individual Olympic gold -- with a lightness. And because he has journeyed well, he comes to his last Games very much at peace. In his last three Games he skipped the tiring Opening Ceremony to prepare himself, yet now he wants to walk out, as flag-bearer, with his vast sporting clan and feel a final sense of kinship. When you retire, you no longer belong. Yes, he says, I am emotional about this Games. I have a playfulness in my nature which I had at my first Olympics in 2000.Theres always a trace of melancholy to the end of athletic journeys. After all, in their 30s, the greatest talent that young people will ever own is forever lost. Yet Bindra, right now, is too busy to play the philosopher. In April, in Rio, just hours after landing he was taking pictures of the Olympic range and mailing them to his mother. By the time he returned, his range in Chandigarh had been turned into a Rio duplicate. Same height of target. Same background colour. Same lighting.When he told me this, I grinned. I love the truth that he always wants to be a new and better and changed man. But this fastidiousness, this painstaking attention to minute detail, was one of the finest parts of his old self. And so even though this is his final Games and an emotional time, just remember, this is Abhinav Bindra. Indoor sniper. Perfections pursuer. Historys chaser. And so please, whatever you do, dont think hes on some sentimental expedition.Well, maybe just for a single second.Rohit Brijnath is a senior correspondent with The Straits Times, Singapore. ' ' '