Jhansipriya Laveti and Vaishnavi Veeravamsham have been selected for the World Championships at Italy starting on July 1, 2021.
Jhansipriya Laveti and Vaishnavi Veeravamsham, both young sailors from Hyderabad, have been selected for the World Championships at Lake Riva Del Garda, Italy, starting on July 1, 2021.
It is a first for Telangana that two girls have been selected for the World Championships in the Sub-Juniors in the same year.
The Under-16 Worlds will be attended by 264 sailors from across 60 countries, making it the most deeply competitive regatta for youth on the planet.
Riva Del Garda is one of the largest lakes in Europe, and is located in the picturesque northern part of Italy, not far from Verona. It provides challenging sailing conditions. Garda is host to all the largest sailing championships in the world, and despite being a lake, simulates huge waves and is backed by sky high cliffs. The kids await their time on the waters at what can be considered the Mecca of sailing championships.
Both Jhansi and Vaishnavi, students of Udbhav School at Rasoolpura, joined sailing in 2018, and rapidly rose to the top of the Indian fleet.
"Jhansipriya is India no. 1 and Vaishnavi is India no. 2, and we are proud that they have been selected and will leave no stone unturned in their participation at the worlds," said Lt Gen K S Rao, President of the Telangana Sailing Association. He added that Telangana now boasted of the largest fleet of boats and sailors across India in, ironically, the land-locked Hussain Sagar lake.
Both girls trained under Suheim Sheikh at the Yacht Club of Hyderabad. "Both girls are training hard, and I do hope that Covid-related visa issues and quarantine issues do not spoil the party. Fingers crossed," said Sheikh, an alumnus of IIT Madras, their coach and also the President of the YCH Foundation, a charitable sports organisation at Hussain Sagar with the tagline "Dignity Through Sports? and working only with marginalised children taking them to international levels of sailing.
Jhansipriya?s mother, a single parent who works as part of the housekeeping team at Yashoda Hospitals, is excited and happy about her daughter going for her fourth international event after the 2019 Oman Asians and the Atlantic Weeks at Portugal and Spain.
Vaishnavi?s mother works as a domestic help for various houses in Marredpally, and cannot believe that her daughter is India no. 2 and will be carrying the tricolour to Italy for a world championship.
However, given the second wave of Covid and the lockdown and quarantine issues, there are many challenges both for the girls and the organisers.