Young sailors gear up for Republic Day Regatta 2021

Hyderabad: Telangana has become the powerhouse of Sailing with the Yacht Club of Hyderabad spearheading junior sailing. The sport is growing with an unprecedented 114 entries for the Republic Day Regatta 2021 as against just 45 in the last Regatta in October.

Suheim Sheikh, the founder of the Yacht Club and its education division, told The Hans India, that the Republic Day Regatta 2021 is schedule to begin from January 26 and will be a three-day event with the valedictory function on January 29. However, the preliminary round of sailing will start at 9.30-10.00 am depending on wind condition on Monday, he added.

This is the first regatta in the Sailing calendar of India and the largest ever in the Junior and Sub Junior categories (kids from 8 to 18 years) and it will also bare testimony to the largest ever fleet of Optimist Class boats to sail in the Hussain Sagar.

In the under-18 Junior Class, to be sailed in the Laser 4.7, Nitin Nayak from MJPT School, who is the current Telangana State Champion is considered the favourite closely followed by Lakshmi Nookarathnam of Udbhav and Gaddam Mallesh also of MJPT.

In the Sub Junior Optimist Class, all eyes will be on India No.1 Jhansi Priya Laveti, second seed Vaishnavi Veeravamsham and third seed Ravali Parandi (all of them from Udbhav School at Rasoolpura) even as the field is wide open and one never knows what dark horses the light and fluky wind conditions will produce.

With 90 entries in the Sub-Junior Optimist Class and 24 in the Junior Laser Class, the entries this year have come from all across the state from the MJPT & SWEAROE Schools and local talent from Udbhav, ZPHS Rasoolpura, Balamrai Govt School, Eureka Model and Balamrai Govt School to name just a few. In a sweeping change, the Yacht Club now offers the talented urban poor a chance to integrate in an online school of International stature where they are taught yoga, art and German including the regular Maths, Physics and Chemistry apart from the intensive Sailing making it a full-fledged Sports School devised to serve the marginalised keeping in mind its tagline "Dignity Through Sports".

"The number of students have swelled dramatically over the last 4 months and most of the students are from schools nearby Hussain Sagar. The whole-hearted support from the student's parents helped us function without a break during Covid with intensive online classes. While most of the world stalled we provided continued education giving our students a huge advantage. We are slowly integrating our syllabus into the flexible National Open School", said Suheim Sheikh.

"Teaching the marginalised kids sailing and winning so many medals was very satisfying but now with this high level education we have transcended to a different level of creating careers," said Dadi Bhote the Vice President of the Yacht Club foundation. The weather has suddenly dropped to conditions that will favour the lighter sailors with winds hovering around just 5 to 9 knots but superb conditions for a lions share of the fleet that has almost 60 beginners who have been trained for around 4 months.