Karnataka's beach boys to make waves

If the Olympics were to host a ‘lifesaving’ game this year, chances are aplenty of India winning at least one of the medals.

“David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson of Baywatch were not the inspiration. But if at all India was looking for another Olympic medal, it should come from life-saving games,” said Yatish Baikampady, CEO of Panambur Beach Tourism Development Project.

Recently, two youngsters from Mangalore’s fishing community were chosen to represent the country in Commonwealth Lifesaving Championship, which will be held next week in Durban, South Africa.

Tushanth Bengre is pursuing his engineering in Mysore while Sanketh Bengre is pursuing his postgraduate studies in basic sciences.

According to a communique from the Rashtriya Life Saving Society’s founder and president Rear Admiral PD Sharma, three others have also been selected to take part in the championship.
The team includes Tarun Murgesh from Chennai and Yashraj Tarkar from Maharashtra. Yusuf Chudesra from Maharastra will be the coach and team manager.

The Panambur Beach Development Project was looking for promising swimmers for developing an army of life savers, not just for beaches in Karnataka but for across the country where there are water bodies.

The project has developed the concept ‘swim and survive’— a programme to train life savers. It was under this programme that Sanketh and Tushanth were selected.

They both won gold medals at different lifesaving competitions held at Trivandrum. Over 200 people took part in the
competition.