Canadian team 2nd, India finishes third.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: A team of three Indian American teenagers has been crowned the winner of the National Geographic World Championship Geography Bee.
The Bee, held this year in St. Petersburg, Russia, featured teams from 18 countries, including the US, Canada, and India. Those three countries placed first, second, and third, respectively. The teams from those three nations were stuck in a hotly contested final-round tiebreakers that finally saw the US team prevail and claim the top prize.
“I’m still trying to process [winning] and what that means,” said Gopi Ramanathan, the oldest member of the team at age 15. A resident of Sartell, Minnesota, Ramanathan has won his state’s geography bee twice already, and finished in seventh place at last year’s National Geography Bee in Washington, DC. When asked to represent the US on an international stage, Ramanathan was caught off-guard.
“I was kind of surprised that they asked me to do it,” he told his regional paper the St. Cloud Times. “But I was happy to be selected.”
His teammates at the World Championship were Neelam Kaur Sandhu of Bedford, New Hampshire, and Asha Jain of Minicqua, Wisconsin. They are 14 and 13 years old, respectively.
The World Championships were conducted by “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebec. Although the US national championship has a prize of $25,000 per team, the World Championship does not give a monetary prize; winners get medals of recognition instead.
Other nations competing at the prestigious event were Australia, China, Germany, Mexico, Russia, and Britain.