Titanium Rods Inserted In His Spine, He's Dominating World's Toughest Race

Five years after titanium rods were inserted into his spine and five vertebrae fused into one, Abhilash Tomy, a former Indian Navy Commander, appears to be in a dominant position at the Golden Globe Race to circumnavigate the Earth in a 36-foot sail boat. He was nearly killed while participating in the same race in 2018. His severe spinal injuries then could have left him paralysed.

The Golden Globe Race is widely considered the toughest maritime race ever devised and is possibly the world's most challenging endurance race.

If Abhilash does go on to finish or possibly even win the round-the-globe challenge within the next 3 weeks, it will be a most remarkable comeback for a man who, on September 24, 2018, lay immobilised in the tiny cabin of his sail boat, deep in the South Indian Ocean - a part of the sea more distant and uncharted than perhaps any other.

His boat, the Thuriya, had rolled over in a horrific storm in 2018. Tomy had fallen more than 30 feet from the mast of the sail boat onto its deck, a life-threatening injury on a vessel that could have capsized at any moment. For more than 70 hours, the world waited as rescuers on ships hundreds of nautical miles away raced towards him - a massive joint effort by French, Australian and Indian authorities determined to get the Navy Commander to safety.

With time running out, communications through emergency satellite transmitters fading and with no clarity on whether he was still alive, the Indian Navy was on the verge of green-lighting an audacious rescue mission - paradropping 4 Naval commandos off an Indian Air Force transport who would attempt to get to Abhilash to stabilise him.

Eventually, a French fishing boat, the Osiris, managed to reach Tomy first, transferring the injured Indian sailor onboard. When Abhilash got back to India, he knew that the challenge he faced was perhaps even bigger than what he had gone through. After complicated life-altering surgery to his back, Commander Abhilash Tomy had to learn to walk again. He eventually went back to work - flying maritime reconnaissance missions for the Navy but the urge to give the Golden Globe Race another shot was a dream that he could never get out of his head. 

In January 2019, Commander Abhilash Tomy quit the Indian Navy to pursue his dream of giving the Golden Globe Race a second shot. It was his life's mission.

''I still retain an email that was sent to me when Abhilash was rescued.'' says Urmimala Abhilash, his wife. The mail was from Vice Admiral Manohar Awati, a 91-year-old Navy veteran who was the first to dream of an Indian sailor circumnavigating the globe. ''He said, 'Urmi, don't worry. He will return to this race and he will win it'.''

Four years later, Admiral Awati is no more. He had died a few months after sending that email to Urmi. Abhilash Tomy, though, continues to live out the Admiral's dream and also his own.

For Urmi, the last seven months have been relentless - she constantly tracks Abhilash's progress on an official race-tracker though it has been three months since she last spoke to him, a rare call which had been set up by race organisers.

It was never easy to let go of Abhilash when he decided he needed to make a second attempt but Urmi knew that 'no' would never be an answer that he would accept. ''Being with him means knowing when to let go,'' she says, explaining how Abhilash was determined to take on the awesome challenge of the race despite his near-death experience of 2018.

Cut to 12 April, 2023: Sailing at a steady clip of between 6 and 7 knots in the mid-Atlantic, Abhilash Tomy has deftly manoeuvred his boat, the Bayanat, into a position where he seems likely to be the first to pick up favourable winds off the Portuguese Azores Islands. This depends entirely on the weather holding but present forecasts indicate that Tomy should be able to find winds at the 30 degrees North Latitude which would enable him to not only close the distance between him and race leader Kristin Neuschafer from South Africa but also be in a possible winning position to sail into the French port of Les Sables-d'Olonne where the race ends. What's clear though is that this is going to be a very close fight to the finish between the two race leaders.

The goal of sailors participating in the Golden Globe Race is to depart from Les Sables d'Olonne and ''sail solo, non-stop around the world, via the five Great Capes and return to Les Sables d'Olonne'', says the race's official descriptor. The boats themselves cannot be more than 36 feet in length and the contestants in the race are not allowed to use any satellite-based navigation aids.

''It takes three to four years of preparation of mind body and the boat, to sail 26,000 miles non stop, solo, unassisted with 1968 technology. No internet or GPS. The race itself is a test of every sailing skill, eight months of solitude facing the elements in the raw, very sketchy weather forecasts by old style HF [High Frequency] radio, not knowing where the other entrants are,'' says Vice Admiral IC Rao, an avid follower who served as the Indian Navy's Chief of Materiel at naval headquarters in 1991-92.

The race, designed to recreate a golden age of solo sailing of the past, means that sailors who compete end up spending 250 odd days out at sea. They navigate with a basic sextant on paper charts. They have no autopilot system, no electronic items. Their skill in determining the weather around them is a key factor in making progress in the race. Only occasionally are sailors allowed to talk to their loved ones when they are within the range of long-range high-frequency radios.

And if things break, there is no one to help.

''During GGR 2022 [the present race], he has "abhilashed" every problem big and small he encountered,'' says Vice Admiral Rao. ''When he ran out of material to repair a broken rudder, he remodelled the wood off the chart table and when that broke, he used the toilet door. He used seawater to cook rice until he collected water in his sails during thunderstorms.''

And the risks are there for all to see. Thirteen of the 16 skippers who sailed out of Les Sables-d'Olonne last year are out of the race. One of them, Ian Herbert Jones, has just survived repeated knockdowns this Tuesday when his boat, the Puffin, ran into a storm well off the coast of Argentina. With winds gusting to 80 knots (148 kilometres per hour) in 8-metre seas, Jones's boat was dismasted. Injured on his back, Jones sent out a distress signal on his emergency beacon, triggering a prompt rescue operation coordinated by the race organisers and international maritime rescue controllers. A Taiwanese fishing boat, the Zi Da Wang was able to rescue Ian despite appalling sea conditions.

For Abhilash Tomy sailing far North, news of Ian, a personal friend, would have been a reminder of how the seas can turn a killer in the blink of an eye. He had seen it all before. And lived to tell the tale.

The next few weeks will be crucial.

Kirsten Neuschafer, looking to be the first woman to win the Golden Globe Race, is fighting Abhilash for every nautical mile and it seems the race to Les Sables-d'Olonne may end up being a photo-finish,. Vice Admiral Rao sees this as ''a thriller unfolding in slow motion".

''Just completing the course is an achievement for the brave heart sailor who has been tested to the limits of human endurance.''

(Photos courtesy: Urmimala Abhilash)