Telangana girl Ananya Chouhan strikes gold at sailing week

For today’s youngsters, time management is the name of the game. While many crib about the lack of it while pursuing their passion as they juggling school, private tuitions and homework, sailor

Ananya Chouhan

of the

EME Sailing Association

in

Secunderabad

is a cut from a different cloth as she does all that and more.

Winner of the Girls Youth Under 18 category in the recently concluded Hyderabad

Sailing Week

2017, Ananya feels on top of the world about her win, “I feel blessed to have won a

gold

. It feels good to see my hard work pay off.” Sailing since the age of 12, the young sailor has her sight set far and wide.

Winning awards is nothing new to Ananya, as the young sailor has already many awards in her kitty – from national championships to a few international ones.

Her tryst with sailing began when her father’s friend Cdr. Dilip Donde inspired her to take up the sport. “He is the first Indian solo circumnavigator to have travelled around the world,” she says. When asked if she plans to follow in her mentor’s footsteps, “Not really! Competitive sailing is more my cup of tea. Sailing for sport gives me a rush like no other.”

But putting aside a chunk of time for passion is always tough when you have academics to juggle it with. “Academics are as important to me as sailing. It gets tough to manage them both but I have a supportive teaching faculty at school. I want to excel both in my studies and passion. So hard work is the only key,” she says. “I have had instances when I’ve had to miss classes due to championships. Once, I even had to miss exams. The only reason I continued to compete in tournaments because I have supportive teachers, friends and family.”

Asian Games and Olympics is where the end game lies for Ananya. “I’m in my twelfth grade, so as of now I’m focusing only on studies. But after that’s done, there’s Asian Games and Olympics to concentrate on. I am yet to plan a strategy, but competing at these two is my aim. Academically, I want to pursue Engineering, but I want to continue training for sailing too.”

Telangana’s winners

Three other sailors from Telangana, apart from Ananya Chouhan, did us proud at the Hyderabad Sailing Week 2017. Patel Ashish and Nagen Behera won gold in the ‘Enterprise (Open)’
category while Deelip Kumar bagged silver in the ‘Laser Radial (Open)’ category. All four sailors, who won medals, are affiliated to the EME Sailing Association, Secunderabad.