KC Ganapathy-Varun Thakkar pair gears up for Asian Games in breathless season

Having clinched a 49er gold at the Asian Championships this month, the Indian sailing pair is confident of a good show at the Asiad.

Athletes tend to switch off—for a while or, in some cases like we’ve seen in India, for the remainder of the entire season—after the completion of an Olympics. The Indian sailing pair of KC Ganapathy and Varun Thakkar though has yet to fully press the pause button post last year’s Tokyo Games.

“It never really stopped for us,” Ganapathy said.

After the 17th-place finish in the 49er class event in their maiden Olympics in July-August, the duo returned to India and swung back to action almost immediately in the form of training and selection trials for the Asian Sailing Championships. That was held in Oman in November, followed by the World Championship the same month. There was more training in store gearing up for the 2022 Asian Championships in Abu Dhabi this month, where the Ganapathy-Thakkar pair won the 49er gold to back up its top finish in the 2021 edition a few months ago.

Save a few weeks of a relatively less intense training period in December-January, it’s been choc-a-block for the sailors since the Olympics, and will remain so right up to the Asian Games (10-25 September).

“We did want a little bit of downtime coming out of the Olympics but had back-to-back Asian and World events,” Thakkar said. “You need a little bit of downtime, not just for the body but for the mental health as well, which is equally important.”

Thakkar and Ganapathy pocketed their third Asian Championships gold medal (fourth overall with a silver in 2019) in Abu Dhabi, accumulating 18 net points across the 13 rounds to sit comfortably on top in the field of seven pairs. Months before in its previous edition in Oman, the Indians finished as the best Asian team and 10th overall in a richer field of 30 (non-Asian teams competed without medals). The same venue hosted the World Championships, where Thakkar and Ganapathy ended 21st.

“A majority of those competing in the Worlds were in the Asian event as well. Our Worlds show wasn’t that good, but we learnt a lot. Compared to some months ago, I feel we have made some improvements and gained more experience,” Ganapathy said.

The latest Asian gold is another step in that direction, although there continues to be ample room for improvement. “The outcome was great, but I think we could have pushed and extended our margin more than we ended up with,” Thakkar said.

The grind isn’t about to halt anytime soon. Post the Asian Championships, the two have dashed off to the Spanish island of Palma for their first training outing in Europe since the Tokyo Games, for which they had trained in Portugal. “It’s a bit chilly; not a lot of sun at the moment,” Thakkar said. “But it’s good to be back in Europe and competing with the rest of the bunch.”

In the months between Tokyo and the tournaments in Oman and Abu Dhabi, Ganapathy and Thakkar stayed put in India. The Chennai-based sailors trained in Mumbai around the selection trials and in Rameswaram—the coastal town in Tamil Nadu they had made their training base during the pandemic-induced lockdown in 2020—around the turn of the year. “We were there December and January. The training wasn’t too intense because we knew we had jam-packed months ahead. But physically we sort of pushed ourselves a little bit,” Thakkar said.

Their coach, Ian Stuart Warren, could not come to India amid the third wave of Covid-19 that hit the country during the period, leaving the duo on its own. The Indians have now reunited with the Australian again. “We’re happy that we’re back as a team,” Thakkar said. “Unfortunately, he couldn’t come down to India. But that’s alright—we don’t look back and regret. We move on and look at what’s ahead of us.”

That’s the big-ticket Asian Games, in which the pair won a bronze medal in the 49er category at the 2018 Jakarta edition. Ganapathy and Thakkar will spend the next month-and-a-half in Europe before coming back to Mumbai in May for the Asiad selection trials.

The stint in Europe—where they will train and participate in a couple of regattas in Spain and France starting with the Princesa Sofia Regatta in April—will be dedicated to, as Thakkar put it, “improving our standards again”. “It will be interesting for us to see how we perform and go about it in Europe,” he added.

“The Asian Championships helped us with our confidence, but also enlightened us on where we are lacking and how much we can improve. There’s a gap that we see in our game where we need to improve and move forward from there.”

If they continue doing that, Ganapathy and Thakkar have no reason to doubt that they can change the colour of the medal in this Asian Games come September. “We believe that we are good enough to win a medal for our country. If we follow the process of the last year-and-a-half, I do believe that bringing back a better medal from last time is possible,” Thakkar said.

“Winning the Asian Games is crucial,” Ganapathy added. “It’s going to be damn tough. But what’s a goal that doesn’t scare you.”