Boys and guns. The fascination never ends for some. Meet Santhosh Nagarajachari, a Chartered Accountant, who has been shooting for 18 years now, without taking up the sport professionally. Eight months ago, he set up the Golden Ace Shooting Sports Academy (www.facebook.com/goldenaceblr) in JP Nagar, where he provides coaching for air rifle and air pistol shooting full-time.
Santhosh calls himself ‘the longest serving non-professional shooter in Bengaluru’.
“I fell in love with guns at the age of 14 and never quit,” he says. After he graduated from college, Santhosh set up a business and tax consulting firm with his friends. “The business grew really well. After about four years we decided to part ways. I started my own firm, which I was handling until last year. I decided to deviate from the safe path, in order to become a coach in a sport that lacked the recognition and fan following as compared to other sports —shooting.”
He narrates: “I’ve always wanted to contribute something to the field of sports and discovered that I like teaching. It was last July that many things fell into place for me. I was on a hectic schedule. My entire staff and I were busy working overnight at the office. To lighten the mood, I decided to take my air-rifle to office and set up a shooting lane. We started shooting after 11 p.m. I showed them how to shoot and it was that night that I found my true calling. One thing led to another and now I’ve set up a full-fledged academy”
Through his shooting academy, Santhosh has taken up the challenge of spreading knowledge about the sport which he feels is still at a nascent stage in this part of the country. “Our visitors might know that there is a shooting competition at a mere distance of 10 meters in the Olympics but when we show them the actual target which is a 0.5 millimetre sized dot, they realise the challenge and are humbled at Abhinav Bindra’s achievement,” the accountant turned entrepreneur says.
Anyone above the age of 11 can enrol at the academy . “My dream is to get at least one person to the Olympics in the next 12 years,” Santhosh says, adding, “My methods are unconventional. I have in place what every shooter needs—from the world’s best guns to other training equipment. This is the only shooting academy with a gym of its own, and regular yoga sessions. This game is 10 percent physical and 90 percent mental, so if the body is not up to mark, then it reflects on your performance in the sport, sooner or later.” Starting off something as unusual and as ambitious as this is quite commendable. “It was very easy as I had the support of my wife, and difficult because my mother and sister did not like the idea,” he quips. “I had the willpower to pursue my passion . I can see that my efforts have been paying off because people are accepting my methods of training. I push everyone to be at the top of their physical fitness game, so much so people here have started telling their friends to join the academy to either become a good shooter or at least a good-looking one! I have found a very good group of shooters, made tons of new friends and this new responsibility is so humbling,” he adds.
Santhosh says: “ I was fully prepared to handle the finances.I have not taken a single day off since I started the range. I’m there from 6 a.m. till 10 pm. And I’m not one to complain.” Apart from focussing on training budding shooters get good enough to make it to the Olympics, Santhosh wishes to join the Territorial Army. “I want to reinvent myself every five years. I kept telling people I want to do something different every five years, live a new life that nobody would relate me to and here I am today,” he says.
This is a weekly column that profile those who veer off the beaten track
