Coach's accidental swim, dramatic finish: How Nethra Kumanan sailed to win Asian Games bronze

Around her, others were celebrating. So were their coaches afar.

Her coach, it turns out, was missing from the usual spot because he had fallen into the water.

“It turns out my coach had fallen into the water for an involuntary swim,” said Nethra with a chuckle in a conversation with The Bridge.

As a puzzled Nethra returned to the harbour, she was greeted with the news of by a handful of Indian spectators present at the Kaiyoh Yacht Harbour in Aichi.

“I asked them if they were sure,” she recalled.

The bronze medal she won was the product of a final day that nearly got away from her. Nethra was placed second before the two final series – the first of which ended up as her worst race in Japan.

It left her with just one option.

“It was quite an emotional day,” she said.

“I knew I had no choice but to win the final race and hope that the results behind me put me on the podium.

“We did some quick calculations and I knew I had to put a boat between Singapore and I to win a medal,” she added.

She ended up winning the Final 2. But Singapore finished second. Nethra clinched on to the podium despite being level with the fourth-placed Hong Kong because she had more second-placed finishes in the ten races prior.

“My coach told me to race without being so conservative, which was a big lesson I learned at the Asian Games,” she said.

A first Games before she could sail

That lesson took years to arrive. Nethra’s first Asian Games came in 2014, when she had only just begun competitive sailing.

Her introduction to the sport came through a summer camp at her local club in 2011 or 2012, arranged by her parents. A week in, she dragged her brother along, and the two were soon spending entire weekends on the water.

By 2014 she had qualified for the continental Games while still at school, and the school could not spare her.

“I had to leave school to attend the Asian Games as we thought of it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity then,” she recalled.

She sailed against the best in the world and found she could hold her own in flashes.

“I had the speed to keep up at moments. My coach told my parents that I had potential,” she said.

Her parents backed that belief with money, sending her abroad for a full year of training. She spent it in Israel with a coach from there, sailing in both youth and senior fleets.

The cost of falling short

She improved at the 2018 Games in Jakarta and then finished fourth at 2022 Hangzhou, one place short of a medal.

The memory of that Hangzhou regatta still stings, partly because of how it ended.

“On the final day back then, the medal race was abandoned twice due to lack of wind while I was in position to take bronze, which was hard to digest.”

She also names her own part in it.

“Mentally I put too much pressure on myself instead of sailing freely,” she said.

That pressure has a long history.

Kumanan moved out of India in 2019 to train in Gran Canaria, Spain. Distance from home blurred the sense of where she belonged.

“My identity felt neither here nor there, and everything rides on results,” she said.

Her family’s financial support added weight.

“I felt a lot of pressure to perform and make their sacrifices worth it.”

Her parents tell her to go and have fun. She has never quite managed to listen.

“I’ve always felt the need to give back.”

Institutional help has eased some of that load. GoSports Foundation connected her with a sports psychologist and a structured training regime, and SAI backed her through the TOPS scheme, with SDAT widening its support.

She turned down offers from the armed forces after the Olympics, since her private and government backing already covered her European training base.

“Financial support for training expenses in Europe has been vital, especially as a civilian athlete without military equipment backing,” she said.

What a medal changes

Kumanan has now experienced both outcomes, and she is candid about how differently they land. The feeling of falling short of gold was the same in Hangzhou and Aichi-Nagoya. The reception was not.

“When you finish fourth, people forget about you because nobody cares about a ‘fourth-place chocolate medal’. A medal simply speaks louder than fourth place,” she said.

She is also honest about the result itself. Bronze brings pride and a lingering ache at once.

“As an athlete who goes in capable to win but unable to do it or mentally not ready, it’s a hard pill to swallow,” she said.

But then comes the pragmatism of a sailor who has waited out many postponed races.

“A medal is a medal, and I’m happy to bring something home.”

That patience has a practical side. Delays and unstable winds are routine in her sport, and she copes by narrowing her focus.

“You have to take it race by race, score as many points as possible, and then reset for the next race.”

A wider tide

When Kumanan first went to the Asian Games, she was one of only two Indian women in sailing.

Today, she says, nationals draw double the number of female entrants, with the Army and Navy encouraging women sailors and the Tamil Nadu government opening new sailing centres.

On a recent visit to her childhood club, she found young children racing, and members who had come to meet her at the airport.

She hopes her medal does for sailing what Olympic podiums did for javelin, badminton and hockey, and she means to keep sailing.

“This is just the start for me, and I plan to build on this and keep going.”