Young Indian sailors bag 7 medals in Oman

New Delhi: Young Indian sailors dished out an impressive show, returning with a rich haul of seven medals, including one gold, four silver and two bronze at the Mussanah Race Week in Oman, an international regatta for youth sailors.

India ruled the Optimist Girls U-15 category, with Shreya Krishna Lakshminarayanan and Kommaravelly Lahari securing the top-two spots. Shreya clinched the gold medal with a net score of 28 points. She put up strong performances, finishing second and third in her first and fifth races respectively.

Across six races, her other finishes were ninth, sixth, eighth, and 24th in her final race, which was discarded as her worst result following the scoring system where the worst finish is dropped. Her overall score was 52 points, but after the discard her net score stood at 28, securing her the gold medal. Kommaravelly followed with a silver, finishing with 50 net points, while Singapore’s Tong Xuan Ya claimed bronze.

In the ILCA-4 U-16 category, India’s Shashank Batham and Akshat Kumar Dohare claimed silver and bronze respectively. Shashank finished just two points behind Oman’s Abdulatif Ziyad Al Qasim, who topped three of the seven races (second, third, and fourth) and won with 12 net points.

Shashank won two races (first and sixth) but finished ninth in the second race, which hurt his chances for gold. His worst race was discarded, leaving him with a total of 14 net points. Akshat secured bronze with a score of 29 net points after seven races. In the ILCA-4 girls U-16 category, India’s Soumya Singh Patel and Shagun Jha took second and third places respectively. Soumya accumulated 39 net points, while Shagun finished with 49 points. UAE’s Marwa Al Hammadi claimed gold with 31.5 net points.

In the ILCA-6 girls U-19 category, Maanya Reddy narrowly missed out on gold, finishing second with 74 net points, just behind the UAE’s Camelia Al Qubaisi, who secured gold with 77 points.