Vishnu Saravanan follows in his father’s footsteps, wins ICLA 7 medal at Asian Games

While his family resided in Pune initially, the Saravanan family shifted to Mumbai when Vishnu was five years old. Four years later, Vishnu would get to train with the Optimist, a dinghy for the age groups of 10-15 years in competitions and would sail in the Arabian sea for close to two-three hours.

“When I first sailed in the sea, I saw it as a freedom from the chaos of the city. I would attend my school till 2pm and then cycle down to the centre in Colaba to start training. I would be lonely at the sea wearing life jacket and handling the dinghy and it would be just me and the boat. I still sail like this sometimes to get a clear mind and that’s perhaps the best training session for me where I could see the fast paced city from a distance in the Arabian sea,” recalls the sailor.

Sailing with the Optimist, a lighter boat with smaller sail as compared to the ICLA 7, Vishnu won a total of 32 national medals including the youth national title in 2016. He also represented India in four junior world and Asian championships but his first international medal came in the Hong Kong Series in 2016. Prior to his being recruited in the Indian Army as Naib Subedar in 2017, Vishnu had stated sailing with the ICLA dinghy, a boat having hull length of 4.23m and beam length of 1.26 m and sail height of 7 metres as compared to sail length of 4.7 m in Optimist.

“The first thing one needs when making the change is to build more muscles to control the ICLA7. Once that’s achieved, the target is to train like the boat is an extension of your body in the sea. The rudder, the sail as well ropes work like extensions and one has to judge about winds as well current and then use the sail to our advantage. It’s like controlling the gearbox of a car but here you are the engine with the wind as fuel. Once you control the boat, one has to see the different areas where the boat can be drafted,” explains the sailor.

Vishnu along with his sister Ramya. (Photo: Special Arrangement)

In 2018, Vishnu became the senior national champion and the following year his base was shifted to Malta by the Army Yachting Node to Malta to train under coach and Olympian Alexandr Denisuic of Moldova and Irish coach Trevor Millar. The same year, Vishnu won a historic bronze in the Laser U-21 World Championship in Croatia. “Training under Denisuic put my focus on the physical needs of the senior category as well in different conditions. So he made me do the physical load more before we sailed in the sea. He says the human body is also like a boat and every part of the body needs to be fit for sailing. I also got to spend some time with sailors like five-time Olympic champion Robert Scheidt of Brazil and London Olympics silver medallist Pavlo Contides of Cyprus and I am still in touch with them. I often watch their videos and share my videos with them and ask for their inputs,” shares Varun.

The youngster claimed one of the two Tokyo Olympics quotas on offer in the Mussanah Championships in Oman in 2021 which acted as an Olympic qualifier. At Tokyo, Varun finished a credible 20th out of 35 sailors and sees the historic achievement as something like Dopamine. “I often laugh with friends that the Tokyo Olympics experience was something like the drug Dopamine. One wants to do it again and again. The conditions in Tokyo were very different. The bay current was a bit tricky and we had the winds spinning in a circle. The wind speed at the start line was different and midway was different. At both sides of the course, there were different winds and it made the task difficult,” says the sailor.

In China, Vishnu finished on 34 points behind three time Asian games champion Ha Jeemin of Korea. With the last and 11th race being cancelled on Wednesday due to unstable winds, Vishnu’s chance of getting past Jemmin’s tally of 33 points and gold medal winner Jun Han Ryan Lo of Singapore’s tally of 26 points did not materialise.

“The bay here is just like Mumbai since a lot depends on the tidal current. But the winds were oscillating and very tricky. One had to judge the pattern of the wins. Bishnu finished second and first in yesterday’s races and had the race happened today, he might have got close or got past the Korean and even Singaporean. The focus for him shifts now to qualifying for the Paris Olympics,” said NS Johal, Commanding Officer of Army Yachting node.

As for Vishnu, he knows what his father would tell me post his return. “When I returned from Tokyo, he told me it had just started. The aim now is to qualify for Paris and have a top-ten finish,” said Vishnu.