Jakarta
India recorded its best showing in sailing at Asian Games as Varsha Gautham and Sweta Shervegar claimed silver in 49er FX event while two men combined to overcome disqualification in their previous race to grab a bronze on Friday.

Thanks to their showings, the country enjoyed its best result since 1982. In 1982, India won a gold in fireball, a silver in enterprise and a bronze in windglider.

For Varsha, it was her second Asiad medal as she had won a bronze in 29er with Aishwarya Nedunchezhiyan in the 2014 edition.
Varsha and Sweta were not chosen by the federation to represent India and only after a court battle did they reach the Indonesian capital.

At the helm of her 49erFX, 20-year-old Varsha and her crew partner Sweta, completed the 15-race event with 40 net points to finish second behind winners from Singapore, who had just 14 net points.

Sailors are given points after each race, and the pair, which gets the least points, is declared the winner.

“These were stressful three months. But everything has paid off. There were a lot of up and down. A lot happened. At least 10 times I thought, it’s not worth it, I can’t handle it but somehow I continued. It was certainly not a glamorous race, there was pressure,” Varsha said.

“And there was a realistic chance of losing today, but we stayed calm,” Varsha said, adding that they needed donations and crowd funding to pursue their passion.

Thakkar and Ganapathy clinched a bronze medal in 49er event after finishing third with 43 net points, missing the silver by just half a point.

They were disqualified in the penultimate race but held their nerves to win the final race today.

“We could have won a gold if we were not disqualified on Thursday. There was no incident and there was false protest by Japan,” said Ganapathy.

The 16-year-old, Harshita, was already assured of a bronze in the Open Laser 4.7 competition and even if she had not competed in today’s race, it would not have made any difference to her result.