Vishnu Saravanan clinched a spot for India in the 2024 Paris Olympics and recently triumphed in the ILCA 7 men's single-handed dinghy race in Mallorca.
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Vishnu Saravanan, an Indian sailor, won the gold medal in the men’s single-person dinghy ILCA7 class at the 2024 Europa Cup held in Mallorca, Spain, this past Sunday. Competing against 90 other boats, Saravanan tied with Willem Wiersema from the Netherlands with 17 points but secured the top spot due to a tiebreaker rule. With 22 points, Australia’s Lawson McAullay took the bronze.
This event took place under the organization of the Reial Club Nautic Port de Pollenca. The ILCA7 is a division of the ILCA, the International Laser Class Association, known for the Laser Standard, a small and light boat with just one sail. During the sailing event, Saravanan came in first in two out of seven races. With 334 sailors battling through winds of 15 to 30 knots, this year’s Europa Cup witnessed a record turnout over its three-day duration.
Earlier in January, Saravanan earned his spot for the 2024 Paris Olympics at the ILCA 7 Men’s World Championship in Australia, becoming the first Indian to do so. Although the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) decide who will represent a country at the Olympics, Saravanan is India’s top choice in his sailing category and is likely to represent India at the Paris Summer Games.
If he did, he would be the second Indian sailor after Farokh Tarapore to participate in more than one Olympic Games, following Tarapore’s participation in 1984, 1988, and 1992. Saravanan, who first represented India in Tokyo 2020, again competes in the small, single-sail boat known as Laser Standard or ILCA7 class.
Born on February 24, 1999, in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, Vishnu Saravanan was introduced to sailing early by his father, a retired army man who used to sail. His father taught Vishnu and his sister Ramya, seeing their potential in the sport. Vishnu started learning to sail at nine years old at the Army Yachting Node in Mumbai. When he was 17, he was picked for the Madras Engineers Group (MEG) Boys Sports Company in 2015.
His ability was quickly noticed, and he soon started collecting medals at junior national competitions, becoming a youth national champion in 2016. That same year, he also grabbed a silver in Hong Kong and joined the Indian Army as Naib Subedar in 2017, which played a big role in his sailing career. In 2018, Vishnu Saravanan claimed his first major title at the senior national championship.
Following that, he relocated to Malta for higher-level training with the Sail Coach Academy, guided by Alexandr Denisiuc, an Olympic sailor from Moldova. Vishnu’s efforts quickly bore fruit; in 2019, he secured a bronze medal at the Laser Under-21 World Championships held in Croatia, a significant milestone positioning him for Olympic qualification events.
His aspirations temporarily hit a snag due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet, during this pause, Vishnu didn’t sit idle; he honed his mental game with the mentoring of Trevor Millar, the Irish originator of the Malta-based Sail Coach Academy where Vishnu was refining his skills. This mental and physical preparation kept Vishnu in top shape for his eventual return to the global stage.
His commitment shone through at the Mussanah Open Championship 2021—an Asian Olympic sailing qualifier. Delivering a stellar performance in the all-important last race, Vishnu not only grabbed the silver medal, trailing Singapore’s Ryan Lo Jun Han but also clinched the Asian slot for the Tokyo Olympics in Oman.
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