Jonathan Anthony, 15, beats Olympians at National Games, faces board exams next
Jonathan Anthony, 15, beats Olympians at National Games, faces board exams next
On Sunday in Dehradun, after he qualified for his first ever shooting final of the National Games, Jonathan Gavin Anthony decided it was time to relax. He did it in a manner that would make complete sense to a 15 year old. He got into his hotel room in Dehradun and settled in for a multiple-hour session of the cartoons — Naruto, Teen Titans Go, and Oggy and the Cockroaches.
Indian shooting is no stranger to prodigies. Indeed, Jonathan had made the final eight at the National Games in Dehradun edging past, someone once considered a shooting prodigy himself — Asian Games champion, Tokyo Olympian, multiple time World Cup winner — Saurabh Choudhary. Both had shot a 578, one point more in fact than the qualifying mark to make the final of last year’s Olympics, with the same number of inner 10s but Jonathan had gone through on the basis of shooting a better final series.
Even a placing in the finals of a senior national competition just two years after he picked up a pistol is impressive enough as it is, but Jonathan would go a lot further. Showing no ill effects from binge-watching cartoons, Jonathan followed up his qualification performance with a near nerveless effort in the final, beating a field that included Olympic bronze medallist Sarabjot Singh to win his first senior national gold medal.
He hadn’t started the finals particularly well – shooting a 9.1. He admitted to being a bit nervous. “I saw all these senior players next to me. I was actually looking to see what they were doing and in that I shot my first shot badly. But after that I started focusing on myself,” Jonathan said.
Indeed, with three shots to go, Jonathan had opened up a sizable 2.4 point lead over the rest of the field.
As the competition ended, he wore a sheepish grin as if embarrassed by the attention, even as his grizzled rivals congratulated him on his achievement. Watching from the stands with a big smile on her face was Jonathan’s mother Ancy. She can take credit for his initiation in the sport. Growing up in Bangalore, Ancy says her son was a hyperactive child. “He just had so much energy. I had him try everything. He took gymnastics classes, learned to dance, went skating and also took up chess,” she says. She even enrolled him in a few classes of Silambam – the Tamil stick fighting martial art. “I thought he should be in touch with his culture,” she says.
What Ancy really hoped her son would be interested in was shooting. She’d been a college-level rifle shooter during her time in the National Cadet Corps (NCC) and says she would have tried to join the air force but for her family’s disapproval. “Although I eventually took up a corporate job, I was adamant that I’d have something to do with the defence line. I married my husband who is in the Intelligence Bureau and I wanted my children to one day join the armed forces as well. I felt shooting was the first step for that,” she says.
In March 2022, she took Jonathan, then 13, and his younger brother to his first class at Bangalore’s Hawkeye shooting academy. While she usually let Jonathan choose what he wanted to do, she admits she was a little more insistent this time. “I told him, you are going to take up this class and you are going to complete it. Don’t even think you don’t want to do it. His younger brother was actually better. He actually was a more natural shooter but he was just 8 years old and too young to compete (the minimum age for state level competition in India is 10 years). But Jonathan was 13, so I was kind of hoping he would stick to it,” she says.
He did. Coach K.Y. Sharandra at the Hawkeye academy noticed this immediately. “He had originally joined just for a foundation course, where you just learn the basics of shooting. But I started to realise no matter how much I taught him he just wanted to shoot more and more,” he says.
When Sharandra tentatively increased Jonathan’s workload, the youngster lapped it up. “He was just obsessed with shooting. I’m someone who has a reputation for really pushing students. My training can go on for a really long time. I teach yoga, technical training, then firing practice and end with a theory class. It is like a school. I’ll make them train for hours and hours and Jonathan never seemed to get bored,” he says.
Three months after he started training, Jonathan went for his first state competition, then his first nationals that same year. Although he didn’t win any individual medal, Sharandra felt Jonathan had something special. He went to Jonathan’s school and personally requested his principal to let the youngster focus on his shooting. “I promised him and I still believe that he will be competing at the 2028 Olympics,” he says.
Jonathan’s parents too backed the decision. “He spends most of his time shooting. I take his notes in school so that he can manage easier. I’ve also told him it’s okay if he just passes. That’s enough for me,” Ancy says.
Over the past year, Jonathan has started pushing towards national recognition. He won a team gold at the junior nationals last year with a qualification score of 576, followed that up with a 582 at the Kumar Surendra Singh Shooting Championships before posting a personal best of 587 at the Khelo India Games in 2024 where he won a silver. He’s posted even higher qualification numbers – twice scoring 594 in practise. But he knows there’s more to do. “I need to do it 10 times more in practice and then perhaps I can shoot this in competition,” he says.
His coach believes he will eventually do so. Jonathan, he says, is a natural shooter. “There are shooters who have a very precise routine every time they take a shot. Then there are freestyle shooters. Yusuf Dikec (The viral gold medal winning Turkish shooter from the 2024 Olympics) is that kind. Jonathan is like that. He just has to line the target with the sight and he presses the trigger. He is very uncomplicated,” Sharandra says.
Jonathan says this as well. “It’s not difficult for me. I like shooting. I love hitting the bullseye the most,” he says.
While he might have won the National Games gold, sport shooting’s an increasingly competitive field in India. In a couple of weeks Jonathan will be competing in the shooting trials in New Delhi meant to select the Indian squad for the upcoming World Cups. In Jonathan’s case, this will determine whether he can earn a place in the Indian team that will compete at the Junior World Cup in September.
Jonathan isn’t so worried about the trials as much as the challenges surrounding it. “I have my class 10 board exams starting on the 15th. I will write my first paper and then I will come to Delhi to compete in my trials. This month is going to be very hard for me,” he says. With both equally important, he will have to manage his time. “I have to study and then I have to shoot also. I won’t have any time for cartoons,” he says.
