It’s not the best of the times for an Indian sportswoman to be sitting smug at 18, content with doing the routine. Not when a fellow 18-year-old, powered by an audacious forehand, sets up a nice appointment with Maria Sharapova, while you simply watch. Or another — Joshna Chinappa — beams down at you from giant hoardings, having made it there on her squash exploits.But Rohini Rau doesn’t wake up every morning wondering what she’s achieved at 18. She clinched her maiden national sailing women’s title recently at Hyderabad and, sailing in a combined fleet of 35, looked promising as she finished more than half of the nine races in the top 5.Far from mulling over comparative career graphs with India’s illustrious teen-queens, though, Rohini is feeding off their confidence while she charts out Indian sailing’s success trail in her laser radial class, also a women’s solo event at the Olympics.Emerging as one of the youngest national champions in sailing, and beating traditional favourites from Goa, Mumbai, Army and the Navy, Rohini (also the reigning Asian champ in the double-seated 420 Class boats crewing for Pallavi Naik) led the women’s race from start to finish at Hussain Sagar’s five-day event. This pretty young teen, like Sania or Joshna, stands quite tall at five-foot-seven and would hardly be faulted if she traded in her sporting gear for a career on the ramp. But she is far more mellow than her contemporaries — perhaps the therapeutic effect of the sea.Rohini laughs off the comparison, saying, ‘‘I can’t afford to be fiery like them because it comes down to surviving with my partner (Pallavi) in the double-handled event. I am competitive always, but I’d better cooperate, otherwise we’ll end up in trouble in the high seas.’’ For someone who deals with — and revels in — two forces of nature as volatile as water and the winds, it would be understating the obvious that Rohini’s clincher is her absolute lack of fear. ‘‘I see this in most of the Indian sportswomen today— Anju, Sania or Joshna. They are very positive while competing internationally, and there are no limits now,’’ she says.‘‘It takes one event to get over that ‘overwhelmed’-bit and I confess I was spooked seeing so many boats in my first race as a 14-year-old, but after that I’ve become fearless,’’ she adds.Hyderabad was where Rohini picked a dozen bruises and suffered her first and final bout of battered confidence, when her dinghy overturned in heavy rains during her maiden competition. ‘‘I called up home, and my mother consoled me and promised to send tickets. But my dad was adamant that I finish all my races, and after that I’ve never turned back,’’ Rohini recalls.
