Ekta Yadav was excitedly looking forward to compete in the World Sailing Championships which begins off The Hague in the Netherlands later this week. However, she has been left bewildered that her crew Karthik Baiye (Army Yachting Node) has not even applied for a visa to be able to travel for the competition, leaving her in the lurch.
“I wish I had been told in advance by Col. Nachhatar Singh Johal, appointed as Nacra 17 coach, that Karthik would not be travelling to The Hague. I would not have spent so much money in organising a boat for the World Championships,” she says. “As recently as on July 16, Col. Johal, who is from the Army Yachting Node, asked me about my arrangements for a boat and I got down to hiring one.”
Speaking from her home base in Bhopal, Ekta Yadav says she is at her wit’s end, trying to figure out what went wrong. “If the intention was not to send a second Indian Nacra 17 team, I wonder why I was asked to undergo a fitness test, obtain a visa and hire a boat for the World Championships,” she says. “I think it is because Col. Johal did not want a second Indian Nacra 17 team to be competing in the event.”
The 28-year-old says she would have been okay if she has not been asked to compete in the World Championships in the first place. “Besides the wasted expenditure, this has come down to mental harassment. And, at the moment, I do not know how to deal with it, more so since it leaves me with a lot of uncertainty even for the National Championships in Mumbai next month,” she says.
However, if she thought she would join the rest of the squad on July 25 for pre-event training, she has another thought coming. “A couple of days later I discovered that my crew had not even applied for his visa. I applied for my visa on July 21 and got it a week later. On August 2, I discovered that Karthik had not submitted his visa application even on July 26,” she says.
“On Sunday, in response to an e-mail I sent to the Yachting Association of India for my tickets, I got an e-mail from the Army Yachting Node saying that it was too late for Karthik to apply for a visa,” she says. She says she suggested that he could possibly apply for a visa with his official passport and secure it in a day but AYN took no steps in that direction, pointing out that all other sailors, coaches and physiotherapist from AYN had applied for and got their visas.
“I am looking for answers and not finding any but I think Col. Johal did not want me and my crew to even have the chance to perform better than the AYN team which is due to represent the country in the Asian Games in China next month,” Ekta Yadav says, recalling that Shaila Charls and she missed out on the Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games in 2018 due to similar circumstances.
YAI had chosen Ekta Yadav and Shaila Charls as the team to represent India in the five-boar Asian Games 49er FX competition but Varsha Gautam and Shweta Shervegar, armed with an order of the Delhi High Court after finishing second in the Asian Championships, forced the Indian Olympic Association to change the team ahead of the Asian Games in Jakarta’s Ancol Marina.
“Perhaps, AYN officials think that I would take the Court route in case my crew Karthik and I performed better than Siddheswar Doiphode and Ramya Saravanan in the World Championships. They probably do not know that I wanted to do well in the Olympic qualifier after having made peace with the fact that I had missed the Asian Games bus,” she says.
After winning the Women’s 49er FX bronze along with Ritika Dangi in the Musannah Open Sailing Championship in Oman in April 2021, Ekta Yadav has moved to helming the Nacra 17 mixed class multihull.
With Karthik as crew, she competed in two Hempel World Cup regattas in April and May as well as in the Kieler Woche in June last year. The pair then finished third in the National Championships in November 2022 and second in the both ranking events held off the Mumbai coast earlier this year to be ranked second behind Siddheswar Doiphode and Ramya Saravanan.
Photo: Courtesy Nacra17.org for illustration purposes only
