Vishnu Saravanan

Some Lesser Known Facts About Vishnu Saravanan

• Vishnu’s family moved to Mumbai when he was just four years old.

• At the age of six, Vishnu Saravanan used to accompany his father to the Army Yachting Node in Colaba, Mumbai, and watch his father windsurf and that’s when he got inclined towards the sport and decided to pursue it as a career.

  

• Vishnu’s father bought him his first Optimist sailing dinghy and started training him on the Arabian Sea when he turned nine years old.

• Before getting into sailing, he was a javelin player in his school and was one year junior to Neeraj Chopra.

• He also participated in the National javelin championship during his school days.

• He was equally interested in football and was about to choose the sport as his full-time career option before his father told him how tough and hard the team sports are.

• Vishnu also played other sports like cricket, badminton, basketball, and hockey.

• In 2011, Vishnu Saravanan participated in the Optimist Coastal National Championship which was held in Cherai, Kochi where he scored four bullets in the ten-race series.

• In 2012, he was selected after giving trials for the National Squad Selection and Ranking Regatta.

• In 2013, Vishnu took part in the National Inland Optimist Championship in the Optimistic category which was held in Mumbai.

• In 2014, Vishnu took part in the India International Regatta which was held in Chennai in which he bagged the first position.

• In 2015, he was selected by the Madras Engineers Group Boys Sports Company and he represented the group for a long time.

• In 2016, he participated in the YAI Youth Nationals which was held in Chennai in which he secured the first position. Later, he participated in the YAI National Championship in 2017 and the YAI Senior National Championship in 2018 in which he secured the first position.

• In 2017, he was formally admitted into the Indian Army as a Naib Subedar.

• In 2018, Vishnu Saravanan shifted to Malta, Europe, to start his training at the SailCoach.

• In the same year, Vishnu suffered from food poisoning due to which he was not able to attend the 18th Asian Games.

• After the 2019 ILCA Laser under-21 World Championship, Vishnu qualified under merit for the Tokyo Olympics 2020 in the Laser STD Class.

  

• He secured the 23rd and 22nd positions in the fifth and sixth races, respectively in the ILCA Laser under-21 and booked a Tokyo Olympics quota.

• Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vishnu’s sailing boats and equipment got stuck in Abu Dhabi and as soon as the Mussanah Open Championship was announced in 2021, Vishnu and his team had to pay a heavy amount of money to get all his sailing equipment transported to Oman so that he could attend the championship.

• In 2021, he participated in the Mussanah Open Championship which was held in Oman in which Vishnu secured the second position in the laser standard, followed by the 25th position at the ILCA 7 World Championship held in Barcelona in the same year.

  

• In 2021, Vishnu slept for 14 hours before his laser standard race in Mussanah, Oman.

• During his practice sessions for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Vishnu used to pull a car that was tied to him to improve his back and core strength. Pulling the car was not a tough job for him and he could easily do it.

  

• Vishnu Saravanan became the first Indian sailor to book a quota place in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

  

• Vishnu’s sailing boats in India are sponsored by the Indian Army.