What did 15-year-old Jonathan Antony do after becoming the youngest 10 m air pistol men’s champion? Watch Japanese anime

“Well, I can say that my mother can relax with the watch-time at least today,” Antony laughs. “But then she has always encouraged me to pursue whatever I am passionate about. To become the National Games champion in a field consisting of Sarabjot Bhaiya is a special feeling. Even though I could not meet him post the final, I am sure I will get to see his Olympic medal some day and emulate his feat some day,” Antony tells The Indian Express.

With his father Godwin an officer with Intelligence Bureau, and mother at an IT company, Antony’s initial interest was to pursue skating as well as football. The parents also let their eldest son learn Silambam, a Tamil martial art involving sticks, to keep him fit.

In March 2022, the mother took her then 12-year old son to the Hawk Eye Rifle and Pistol Academy in Electronic City in Bengaluru. “I was a National Cadet Corps shooter during my college days and my thought was to ignite Jonathan’s interest in shooting along with other sports. He would pursue gymnastics, skating, chess as well Silambam. Initially, he shot with the academy’s pistol since we could not afford a new pistol. But once he shot good scores and was consistent, we got him a new pistol costing more than 1.8 lakh,” recalls the mother.

A score of 350/400 in Antony’s first state championship within three months of training spiked the interest of the academy coach Sharanendra KY, who did fret about the boy’s height.

“His father is a tall man and his mother too is 5’ 7” tall. So I knew that this boy too will grow tall. In rifle events, height can act as a disadvantage since one has to bend more in that case. My main focus initially was to make the pistol weight on his wrist and forearm come to the shoulders and the buttocks to balance the recoil considering his height and Jonathan adjusted well to that. We would shoot 60 shots and 120 dry holding shots to achieve that balance. I can say he is a free loading shooter just like Paris Olympics mixed team silver medallist Yusuf Dikec of Turkey,” recalls Sharanendra. “Nowadays he shoots with Morini 162 Titanium and we shoot a minimum of 120 shots daily with 240 shots dry holding and two sessions of 180 shots every week. Once he settles with the new gun, his scores will improve,” says the coach.

In the 2023 national championships, Antony won the gold in the 10m air pistol youth event. Last year, the youngster won the gold in Kumar Surendra Shooting Championship where he shot a qualification score of 582 apart from winning a silver in Khelo India Games where he shot 587 in qualification. “Since his style is almost freestyle, a lot of time was spent working on techniques like front sight focussing and dept of ray sight positioning apart from finding the balance between the rear and front sight combinations,” says the coach.

Antony was tied with 2018 Asian games champion Saurabh Chaudhary at 578 in qualification but edged out the UP shooter on the basis of best last series after both the shooters were tied on inner tens too. On Sunday, Antony’s first shot was a 9.1 but the youngster then shot consistently with a 2.4 point lead over the second placed shooter with three shots remaining in the final and winning the gold with a margin of 0.4 points over Ravinder Singh.

“One of the competitors was standing way beside the yellow line and it bothered Antony. He is not bothered about his competitors and I knew he will recover from that,” says the coach.

As for his next assignment followed by the mixed team events, the BS International School student will be preparing for his tenth standard exams starting February 15. “I can play some minutes of the video game God of War Ragnarok for a few days apart from watching old videos of Olympic legend Jin Jong-oh before my mother reduces my screen to nil for exams,” laughs the teenager.