NEW DELHI: Four Indian sailors will be participating in this year's Tokyo Olympics and this will also be the first time that India would be competing in three sailing events in the Olympics.
Vishnu Saravanan, Nethra Kumanan, and the pair of Ganapathy Chengappa and VarunThakkar have qualified for the Olympics. Nethra is also the first Indian woman sailor to qualify for the Olympics in the laser radial event. The pair of Ganapathy and VarunThakkarhave qualified in Men's 49er Class sailing event while Saravanan qualified in Laser Standard Class.
"Well, COVID for us has given us more time and it has given us an opportunity to learn more. We have more time to improve as both Nethra and I are young, we always have looked to learn a lot. We used that time to improve our physical and mental state," said Vishnu while replying to an ANI query during a virtual press conference.
"(At) Olympic qualifiers, the whole nation has so much hope on you and there is pressure on you, you need to have a cool mind like MS Dhoni, we have to be very cool and just do our job. During lockdown we just focused on fitness and sailing, that's it,"
Answering the same question, Nethra said: "Training is going to be difficult obviously, that's the nature that we get vaccinated and we can leave the country before everything is locked down. That's the only worry at the moment, hopefully, that works out." Agencies