Top five youngest Indian athletes to win medal at Commonwealth Games ft. Manu Bhaker

Shooter Anish Bhanwala is India’s youngest Commonwealth Games medallist.

Winning a medal for your country at the Commonwealth Games is every athlete’s dream. Many athletes end their careers without winning a single medal, despite working hard.

However, some athletes have achieved success at an early age, becoming Commonwealth Games medalists even before turning 18. In this article, we take a look at India’s five youngest Commonwealth Games medallists.

Youngest Indian athletes to win a medal at CWG

5. Mehuli Ghosh (17 years, 4 months, 20 days)

Mehuli Ghosh’s silver at Gold Coast came down to the barest of all margins. She and Singapore’s Martina Veloso finished dead level at 247.2 in the women’s 10m air rifle final, forcing a shoot-off that Veloso edged narrowly.

At 17, on her Commonwealth Games debut, Ghosh had already shown she belonged among senior shooters. She had set a junior world record and picked up two World Cup medals earlier that same year in Mexico. She later won gold at the 2019 South Asian Games.

4. Malaika Goel (16 years, 9 months, 2 days)

Malaika Goel’s story is the classic underdog one! She wasn’t even considered the shooter who would bring home a medal for India. Heena Sidhu had topped qualification and was the clear favourite heading into the Glasgow 2014 final, while 16-year-old Goel scraped through in fourth.

Then the final flipped the script entirely. Sidhu crumbled out in seventh, and Goel found herself locked in a genuine fight for gold with Singapore’s Shun Xie Teo, trailing by just 1.5 points at the very end.

She lost that battle for gold but walked away with silver, but the girl from West Bengal ensured the nation continued to find success in the shooting discipline.

3. Manu Bhaker (16 years, 1 month, 21 days)

Manu Bhaker picked up a pistol at 14, and within two years, she broke Heena Sidhu’s national record at the 2017 championships.

By the time Gold Coast came around in 2018, she had already made a mark for herself, having shot a Games-record 240.9 in the women’s 10m air pistol final to win the gold medal.

She would go on to become the youngest Indian to win ISSF World Cup gold that same year, and the foundations laid at 16 eventually carried her all the way to win two Olympic bronze medals in Paris.

2. Saina Nehwal (16 years, 2 days)

Long before she became the face of Indian badminton, a teenage Saina Nehwal was part of the mixed team that brought home bronze at Melbourne in 2006.

This was Nehwal’s first real experience on a global multi-sport stage; it took place the same year she won the Philippines Open and became the youngest Asian player to win a four-star title.

Four years later, Saina returned to the New Delhi Commonwealth Games and won singles gold outright, to go on to become India’s first Olympic badminton medallist in 2012.

1. Anish Bhanwala (15 years, 10 months, 9 days)

A 15-year-old walking into a pistol final full of grown men and simply out-shooting them isn’t a common sight, but that’s exactly what happened at Belmont Shooting Centre in 2018.

Anish Bhanwala had already served notice by topping qualification with 580 points and 22 central bulls, but his flawless performance left everyone genuinely stunned.

He shot a Games-record 30 out of 40 to beat Australia’s Sergei Evglevski and England’s Sam Gowin, who at 17 was still two years his senior.

Interestingly, Bhanwala switched from modern pentathlon to shooting just a few years ago, and by 2017, he had already secured five medals and a world record at the Junior World Championships.

By winning a gold medal on the Gold Coast, he became the youngest Indian to top the Commonwealth podium. It is a record that, as of now, nobody’s come close to touching.

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