Nepal’s Georgia Chaudhary lost 4 friends in flood; puts tragedy aside to compete at Asian Games

NAGOYA – In the weeks leading up to the Asian Games, Georgia Chaudhary’s life revolved around soft tennis.

Training camp in Kathmandu, Nepal, involved twice daily sessions, as the 31-year-old geared up for her debut in Aichi-Nagoya.

That routine was abruptly disrupted on Aug 26, when news broke that a massive glacial collapse had caused catastrophic flash floods in the Himalayan border region of Nepal and Tibet.

Sport was suddenly no longer her sole focus.

She was safe in the country’s capital, about 60km from the disaster zone in Nepal’s Langtang national park, but Chaudhary feared for her friends who lived in the region.

Over the next few days, she became increasingly anxious as the full magnitude of the disaster became clear – it had hit several downstream villages in northern Nepal, bringing destruction along a 100km stretch of the Lende Khola and the Trishuli River.

“It was so difficult to hear it, then to see it, my eyes were full of tears,” Chaudhary told The Straits Times on the sidelines of the Asian Games soft tennis competition on Sept 21.

“It made me so weak for one week maybe. Our concentration was just on the floods and not the Asian Games.

“But when the government was helping then there was relief, so we just wanted to play for our nation and we were back to training.”

Recounting the week’s events with a composure and calm that belied her experience, Chaudhary recalled her worries compounding when she was unable to contact her friends.

She eventually learnt through the news that four of them had died.

Nepal’s flash floods have since claimed over 1,400 lives, with more than 6,000 people still missing nearly a month later.

“For the preparation, of course there was emotional attachment with the people,” said Chaudhary, who managed to contact her friends’ families to offer her condolences.

“My friends, four people, died in the flood so that made me a little bit sad, but life goes on and we are back to practice again.”

For Chaudhary and her three other soft tennis teammates, the competition is a milestone for Nepal as it marks their return to the sport for the first time since the 2014 Asiad.

The quartet are part of a 135-strong Nepalese contingent who are competing across 21 sports at this edition.

While their focus has shifted back to the quadrennial event, Chaudhary and her mixed doubles partner Khamal Bhandari have also supported relief efforts back home through donations.

The duo opened their campaign at the Nagoya City Higashiyama Park Tennis Centre with a 5-0 loss to Chinese Taipei’s Yu Kai-wen and Huang Shih-yuan, before beating Mongolia’s Khurelbayar Khaliunbayar and Ganbold Khongorzul 5-4 to finish second in group F.

They bowed out of the tournament on Sept 21 after a 5-1 defeat by Indonesia’s Fernando Sanger and Siti Arasy.

Bhandari, 47, said: “Many people have died and some are still not found, they’re still looking for them, and many people are also homeless.

“The government is helping but it’s still not easy.”

Other athletes from Nepal also spoke about the effect of the floods.

Volleyball player Usha Bhandari told the Asian Games News Service that while the floods did not disrupt their training, the situation has affected them mentally.

She hopes that her team, along with the rest of the Nepalese contingent, can bring some cheer to their countrymen.

She said: “We were in a closed camp but our families were at home. We were a little bit worried because we were not in contact with our parents at that time.

“The situation in Nepal is a very big thing for us. We are here as Nepalis and I think we are making Nepal proud.”

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Kimberly Kwek joined The Straits Times in 2019 as a sports journalist and has since covered a wide array of sports, including golf and sailing.