Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore is an Indian shooter who won the silver medal in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens in the Men’s Double Trap category. He is the first Indian after Norman Pritchard to win individual silver medal. He was born on 29th January 1970 in Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. Rathore graduated from the National Defence Academy, and since served in the Indian Army where he retired as a Lt Colonel in 2013, before joining politics. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He won his first Lok Sabha election in 2014 and is currently the Minister of State for Ministry of Information and Broadcasting under the Narendra Modi government. At the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, Rathore won a Gold Medal and set a new Commonwealth Games Record of 192 targets out of 200, which still stands. He also won the Team Gold Medal along with Moraad Ali Khan. Rathore, went on to successfully defend his Commonwealth Champion title by winning the Gold Medal at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in 2006. He also won the Silver in the Team event with Vikram Bhatnagar. He won Gold Medals in two World Shooting Championships, at Sydney in 2004 and Cairo in 2006.

In 2006, Rathore won a Bronze Medal in the World Championship in Spain, an event held for the top 12 shooters of the world. He was ranked third in the world for the most of 2003 and 2004 and briefly climbed to the first in early 2004 and second after the Athens Olympics. He won a Bronze at the World Championship in 2003 for India after a gap of nearly 40 years. India had not seen a victory since Karni Singh of Bikaner, who won a Silver at the 1962 World shooting Championship in Cairo. Rathore is accredited for winning the Asian Clay Target Gold Medal for four times in a row from 2003 to 2006. He also holds an Individual Bronze Medal which at the Asian Games 2006 in Doha. He got Arjuna Award in 2003-2004 and Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 2004-2005 from the Government of India. He received one of the highest civilian awards of India Padma Shri.