Vishal Ram­sub­hag, the re­cent win­ner of the Boys Un­der-19 triple-crown triple at the Ju­nior Caribbean Re­gion­al Bad­minton Con­fed­er­a­tion (CARE­BA­CO) Cham­pi­onship, is set to com­pete at the Cos­ta Ri­ca Fu­ture Se­ries Bad­minton Tour­na­ment. 

The tour­na­ment will serve off at the BN Are­na, Atil­lo, San Jose, Cos­ta Ri­ca, from Tues­day and will run un­til Sep­tem­ber 14. 

The 18-year-old Ram­sub­hag, a for­mer Na­pari­ma Col­lege stu­dent who leaves on Sat­ur­day for San Jose, says he will use the tour­na­ment in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca as part of his prepa­ra­tions for the YONEX BWF World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships 2024, which will serve off in Nan­chang, Chi­na, next month. 

In Chi­na, the Mixed Team Cham­pi­onships (Suhan­d­i­na­ta Cup) will be con­test­ed from Sep­tem­ber 30 to Oc­to­ber 5, while the In­di­vid­ual Cham­pi­onships (Eye-Lev­el Cups) run from Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 7 to Sun­day, Oc­to­ber 13. 

Last month in Aru­ba, top-seed­ed Ram­sub­hag was one of four T&T play­ers to com­pete in the tre­ble at the Ju­nior CARE­BA­CO Cham­pi­onship with Ama­ra Urquhart (Girls Un­der-19), Asia Lee Waller (Girls Un­der-13), and Ethan Ram­cha­ran (Boys Un­der-17), and look­ing ahead Ram­sub­hag said he has his eyes set on com­pet­ing at the next Olympic Games in Lon An­ge­les in 2028.

How­ev­er, in or­der to achieve his goal, Ram­sub­hag ad­mit­ted he will need to be com­pet­ing at a high­er lev­el and against top-qual­i­ty in­ter­na­tion­al op­po­si­tion on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, which is not avail­able here in T&T. 

Play­ing at the Cen­tro De­porti­vo Playa in Von­del­laan, Oran­jes­tad, Ram­sub­hag de­feat­ed Ja­maican Daniel Ford 21-18, 21-16 in the Boys’ Un­der-19 Sin­gles de­cider while he cap­tured the Boys Un­der-19 Dou­bles with Aditya Ma­haraj, 21-7, 21-9 over Daniel Ford of Ja­maica and Bar­ba­di­an Shail­lon John­son, and in the Mixed Dou­bles, Ram­sub­hag and San­na Guria beat Ma­haraj and Urquhart 21-19, 21-8 for the U-19 crown. 

Re­flect­ing on his per­for­mances in Aru­ba, Ram­sub­hag, who cre­at­ed his­to­ry in 2023 by win­ning the Boys’ Un­der-19 Sin­gles for the first time since the tour­na­ment start­ed in 1972 be­fore suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ing his ti­tle this year, said, “Win­ning the ti­tle in this age group and be­ing the first T&T play­er to ever do so was a re­al­ly ex­cit­ing feel­ing last year, so re­peat­ing as cham­pi­on was a kind of the same feel­ing.

“How­ev­er, when I com­plet­ed the triple crown, I felt an ex­tra bit of hap­pi­ness be­cause a lot of peo­ple in­vest­ed a lot of time and mon­ey in­to sup­port­ing me and my quest to reach the high­est lev­els of the sport, and even though this is just the start, I felt like the three ti­tles in Aru­ba were a way of re­pay­ing some of that faith shown in me.” 

Look­ing ahead, Ram­sub­hag, a karate black belt, said he was go­ing to con­tin­ue to use the in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments as a learn­ing curve, with his main fo­cus on be­ing ready for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion process for LA28. 

The tour­na­ment in Cos­ta Ri­ca will fea­ture play­ers from Pe­ru, El Sal­vador, Por­tu­gal, Cana­da, Ecuador, Guatemala, Bar­ba­dos, Ger­many, Eng­land, USA, Paraguay, Chi­nese Taipei, and Brazil, to name a few.

For Ram­sub­hag, it will be his sec­ond in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment of the sea­son out­side the Ju­nior CARE­BA­CO com­pe­ti­tion. 

He said, “Pri­or to the CARE­BA­CO, we par­tic­i­pat­ed at the Pan Amer­i­can Games Bad­minton Tour­na­ment in Mex­i­co, and we had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete against top op­po­si­tion from the USA, Cana­da, Pe­ru, Brazil, and Mex­i­co as well, and for me, it was a great learn­ing curve as I gained a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence as the lev­el there is much high­er than at CARE­BA­CO. 

Ram­sub­hag, who be­gan play­ing the sport six years ago at school just out of cu­rios­i­ty and has al­so shown his di­verse tal­ent by win­ning the 2022 mu­si­cal fes­ti­val play­ing pi­ano and was first in the South Zone ear­li­er this year, ad­mit­ted that to get to the Olympics he will need to put in a lot more work than he cur­rent­ly does. 

“The next Olympic Games are in Los An­ge­les, but for me to qual­i­fy, I will need to put in a lot more sac­ri­fice and hard work, and hon­est­ly, I don’t think that I can achieve that by stay­ing in Trinidad. 

“My plan is to fur­ther my stud­ies in me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing while at the same time com­mit­ting my­self a lot more to the sport, and while Malaysia and Chi­na are the ide­al places for me to de­vel­op my­self in the sport, the two best pos­si­ble places for me to have the right bal­ance in my stud­ies and bad­minton are the USA and Eng­land,”  stat­ed Ram­sub­hag.