I kept control over my nerves: Vijay Kumar

India's Vijay Kumar made it a bitter-sweet day for India at the Royal Artillery Barracks on Friday.

After Joydeep Karmakar finished fourth in the 50m rifle prone, Kumar clinched silver in the 25m rapid fire pistol event on Friday afternoon. This was India's second medal in the London Games after Gagan Narang's bronze in the 10m air rifle.

The 26-year-old from the Indian Army was unnerved by the challenge thrown in by world champion Alexei Klimov of Russia, Chinese duo of Ding Feng and Zhang Jian and German Christian Reitz in the 40-shot final.

He held his never to finish behind Cuba's Leuris Pupo who shot his way to the gold with a world record equaling tally of 34.

"This medal means such a lot to me. It has been my dream to win an Olympic medal. It is the highest you can get. I have a lot of medals on the wall but an Olympic one was missing until now," said Kumar, who belongs to a village in Hamirpur district of Himachal Pradesh.

He added: "I have been in other competitions where the scoring has been normal like this but this was the Olympic Games."

After winning India's fourth Olympic medal from shooting - Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore won silver in Athens 2004 and Abhinav Bindra struck gold in Beijing 2008 -- a euphoric Kumar talked about his mental strength as well.

"You can never blank out the fact that you are competing in the Olympic Games but I managed to remain focused. I knew I had to keep control over my nervous system. This was my first Olympics, I knew I had to keep concentrating and I did that," Kumar said.

In the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, Kumar won 3 gold medals and silver. Earlier at London, he had failed to qualify for the men´s 10m air pistol finals on July 28.

On a day when Narang and Karmakar were on show in the 50m rifle prone, no one gave Kumar much attention. But his true Army grit finally came to the fore.