After finishing seventh, fifth and fourth at the previous three editions, India’s Nethra Kumanan finally reached the podium and returned with a bronze in the women’s dinghy sailing event at the Asian Games 2026 in Aichi-Nagoya on Friday.
Nethra finished with 14 points after the two-race final series at the Kaiyoh Yacht Harbor. Thailand’s Sophia Montgomery won gold with five points, while Singapore’s Jania Ang took silver with 13.
The Indian sailor entered the finals with seven recalculated points from the qualification series held earlier in the week.
The top ten ranked boats at the end of the qualification series of the dinghy events progress to the finals.
In Final 1, Nethra finished in sixth place (adding six points) but responded by winning Final 2 (adding one point), a result that lifted her into third place overall.
“It was windy and shifty,” Nethra said. “In the first race, I made a huge mistake at the start. I tacked without pressure, without wind, and I was immediately out of the game.
“I knew I had to win the last race, or it would be over for me. That is what I did. I had to fight back.
“This is just a mental game: who makes fewer mistakes and who deals with the pressure the best. I did make a lot of mistakes, but in the last race I managed to save a little bit.”
Nethra finished level on 14 net points (seven points each from the qualification series and the finals) with Hong Kong China’s Stephanie Norton, but took bronze on the tie-break after holding the better head-to-head record across the series.
The bronze continued a steady progression across four Asian Games for Nethra Kumanan.
She finished seventh in the women’s Laser Radial at Incheon 2014 and fifth at Jakarta 2018 before narrowly missing the podium with a fourth-place finish at Hangzhou 2023, by which time the class had been renamed ILCA 6.
“Very mixed feelings,” Nethra said. “It was my fourth Asian Games, and it is nice to finally be able to go away with something, but I made a lot of mistakes and gave away a lot of points.”
Nethra is also a two-time Olympian. She became the first Indian woman sailor to qualify for the Olympics when she secured a Tokyo 2020 berth in 2021.
She finished 35th at Tokyo 2020 before returning for the Paris 2024 Olympics, where she placed 21st in the women’s dinghy.
Her bronze was India’s third sailing medal at Aichi-Nagoya 2026, following the men’s skiff silver won by Manu Francis and Prince Kurisinkal Noble and the women’s skiff bronze claimed by Harshita Tomar and Shital Verma.
Elsewhere on Friday, Vishnu Saravanan, also a two-time Olympian, finished fourth in the men’s dinghy with 21 points. Ha Jee-min of the Republic of Korea won the gold medal with nine net points, while Khairulnizam Mohd Afendy of Malaysia took the final step of the podium with 14 net points.
Saravanan won a bronze medal at the previous Asian Games in Hangzhou.
The men’s and women’s dinghy competitions at the Asian Games 2026 also formed part of the qualification pathway for the LA 2028 Olympics, with the champions earning a continental quota for their NOC for the Summer Games.
In the mixed dinghy later in the day, Shraddha Verma and Ravindra Kumar Sharma finished seventh overall with 55 net points.
The sailing competition is scheduled to conclude on October 3.
read more: https://www.olympics.com/en/news/asian-games-2026-sailing-nethra-kumanan-bronze-medal-women-dinghy
