Vishnu Saravanan: fighting the headless chicken and promoting sailing in India

His aim at Paris 2024 is to improve on his score at Tokyo 2020. “I was 20th out of 35 in Tokyo, so not too bad, but I think top 15 in Marseille would be very nice, and the dream would be to get into the Medal Race.”

Making improvements in the ILCA 7 takes years of dedicated and hard grind. For Saravanan, moving to Malta for two seasons of training in 2018 and 2019 really helped to raise his game.

“That was the year I really started to get the hang of it because I had a training camp with the Croatians. They’re really great mentors because I asked them all kinds of questions about technique or tactics, and they really help with their advice, which I appreciate.

“And Pavlos [Kontides, the Cypriot former world champion and Olympic silver medallist] is my idol. He’s always helping me out whenever I need something, and I appreciate that as well. That’s what sport is about. We just kind of help each other and that’s what gives me the motivation to keep on getting better.”

Winning a bronze medal at the Under-21 World Championships in 2019 was a breakthrough experience for the Indian sailor.

“I was lucky enough that Tonci [Stipanovic, Croatian double Olympic silver medallist] handed the trophy to me, so that was quite nice.

“From there I just started to improve and there’s no secret. You just have to train hard, you have to hike hard and to keep the brain sharp because all the top guys are quite sharp – online and offline – when they’re on the water and off the water.

“You have to train your mind and your body basically, nothing else. It’s like the top guys, their brains never switch off, whereas when my brain switches off, I’m just a stupid idiot. Sometimes I am the headless chicken which is not so good, but I am working on getting rid of the headless chicken.”

The other thing he’s working on is raising awareness of the sport in India.

“Awareness is very low, and we have to improve this because we do have a lot of water around us, so there’s no point not trying sailing.

“I’m from the Army public school and we organise some camps where the kids come out every weekend and they train and they learn about the sport. That’s the first thing you want to teach. Because if the kids don’t know what what sailing is then they will never try it.

“I want to give them an option to just try out sailing and if they like it, hopefully they will continue. You never know, maybe they’ll find another me, or someone better than me. That would be a good thing for the future of sailing in India.”