Sailors Preethi, Jhansi bag medals at Asiad selections
Hyderabad, May 26: Preethi Kongara, 17 and Jhansi Priya, 15, won the silver and bronze medals respectively at the final Asian Games Trials at Bombay Harbour in the Olympic 470 Mixed and Asian Games Laser Class respectively.
Jhansi opened her series with a bang winning the first race after having judged the complex Bombay tidal conditions brilliantly but with many unforced errors and bad starts in subsequent races ended up with a bronze medal behind the more experienced Rithika Dangi and Neha Thakur of Bhopal. She is however a year younger and could well qualify for the 2023 Asiad at China in the qualifiers coming up.
Preethi Kongara was in lower form compared to the second trials held just a week earlier where she won a comfortable gold. Being the top seed nerves
got the better of her and Naval officer crew Sudanshu Shekhar, making them anxious and they badly lost a few races and were unable to recover giving the Sharma and Uma Chauhan pair an unassailable lead to clinch gold.
Preethi and Sudanshu were placed third and 4 points behind Ramya Sarvanan and CHS Reddy at the beginning of the last day of racing when they regained form and beat them significantly to down them by 4 points in the final tally to win the silver.
With the Asian Games postponed and no clear date, the Yachting Association of India is bound to hold another series of trials and that throws the selections and ranking open once again giving both Preethi and Jhansi a good chance at the 2022 Asiad as well as for Preethi at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Both girls are training hard at the Yacht Club of Hyderabad under the mentorship of their coach and director of the Naavika Project, Suheim Sheikh.
Preethi has now set eyes on the World Championships at Israel to be held in October.