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Nethra Kumanan, first Indian woman sailor to qualify for Olympics: I’m honoured to have made history
Kumanan, 23, has become the first Indian woman to ever qualify for the Olympics in sailing. She talks how she took up the sport and why opportunities for the sport are limited in India.
She might be the 10th Indian to qualify for a sailing event at Tokyo Olympics, but Nethra Kumanan’s success is important for another reason: she is the first woman to do so, and that too, by booking a direct berth through a qualifying event! “I’m extremely happy to have made it this far, and hope to do even better at the games,” says the 23-year-old.
The Chennai-based sailor, who represented India at 2014 and 2018 Asian Games, will now compete in the Olympics this year, as part of the laser radial class of sailing. But says that she doesn’t let the pressure of being the first one to accomplish this feat, come in her way. She says, “I’m very honoured to have made this history, and it gives me a lot of relief. I don’t let stress bother me because I know people will say what they want to say. The Olympics have been a goal for a really long time, and I’m sure it’ll be very exciting to represent my country!”
Training under her Hungarian coach Tamas Eszes — a two-time Olympian in laser standard class — Kumanan recalls how she got stuck in Spain last year, due to the travel restrictions during the pandemic. “It was a tough time, and made me homesick,” she says, adding, “I would watch a lot of Hindi movies when I would miss home and my family. Which is why now, when I’m home, I just relax and spend time with them before I head out again for training.”
Talk about home and the memories of her childhood, when her parents introduced her to the sport, come rushing back to her. “My parents would put me in a lot of extra curricular activities... every summer meant a different camp. Once we saw an advertisement about a sailing summer camp, and that’s how I joined the sport,” she reminisces the time when she was 12, and was also receiving training in Bharatanatyam, singing and painting. “I needed to give a lot of time to sailing, and there was no time left for anything else. In the end, I had to give them all up,” she adds.
Not just her extracurricular interests, but even her regular schooling had to take a back seat, in her journey to reach where she is today. “I’ve been training abroad a lot. When I was in grade XI, I had to quit school because we could only get 10 days leave, and I had just qualified for the Asian Games. So I had to leave regular schooling, and do my XII through an open school. I’m four years behind; my younger brother and me are in the same year of college, which is a funny coincidence,” says Kumanan, who is presently a second-year student of engineering.
They say ‘Where there is a will, there is a way’, and so is the case with this young sailor, who has faced her share of difficulties since she took up a sport that’s quite expensive. “My father says he has been lucky that he has always managed funds whenever I needed them. But there was a whole year in the middle when I had to stop sailing. Now I have support from different places that help me pursue the sport,” says Kumanan, opining: “Sailing is a European sport in some way. There are clubs in India that provide opportunities, but here we focus more on studies and look at sailing as an extracurricular activity that will give us an edge during admissions. Also, it’s more of the navy or the army that sail, and finding coaches is difficult as well. I hope it picks up in India in the near future.”
Author tweets @bhagat_mallika
