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Tokyo 2020 Olympian Nethra Kumanan secured India's second Paris 2024 Olympics quota in sailing during the Last Chance Regatta, an Olympic qualifier event, held in Hyeres, France on Friday.
She was competing in the women's dinghy (ILCA 6), Nethra managed to get a fifth-place finish after scoring 67 points in the overall leaderboard. However, due to the virtue of being the top performer among all sailors from the Emerging Nations Program (ENP) who were yet to get a quota, she managed to earn her country a ticket to the Olympics. World Sailing, the governing body of the discipline at the worldwide level makes use of the ENP programme to help sailors from countries that are not known to have a massive culture of this sport, as per Olympics.com. In the women's dinghy, the top three sailors, Romania's Ebru Bolat (36 net points), Marilena Makri of Cyprus (37 net points) and Slovenia's Lin Pletikos (54 net points) got quotas as well. Six-time Olympian Tatiana Drozdovskaya (59 net points) missed out on a quota after finishing fourth. She was competing as an individual neutral athlete. The event is the final chance for players to secure their 2024 Olympics quota. Kumanan who played for India in the Tokyo Olympics, also competed at last year's Hangzhou Asian Games, the Asian Sailing Championships and this year's ILCA6 Women's World Championships in January, but failed to get an Olympic quota at these events. A total of 17 Indian sailors were in action during the Last Chance Regatta 2024 from April 21 to 26. Out of these, only Kumanan finished in the top 10. The Tokyo Olympian Vishnu Saravanan secured India its first sailing quota for the 2024 Olympics in the men's dinghy this January in Australia at the ILCA 7 Men's World Championship 2024. (ANI)
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