Anamika Veeramani of Ohio spelt “stromuhr” to claim the National Spelling Bee championship. [AP]
In a way she made history by becoming the third consecutive Indian-American to win the Bee. Can we say 3peat???!!!
Anamika became the third consecutive Indian-American bee champion, and the eighth the last 12 years. It’s a run that began when Nupur Lala won in 1999 and was featured in the documentary “Spellbound.”
The previous winner Kavya Shivashankar from Kansas and Sameer Mishra from Indiana in 2008 complete the desi trifecta.
I caught part of the finals in a restaurant and could’ve sworn I saw one of the eliminated contestant’s, desi of course, mother scold him. This year’s event was fraught with controversy stemming mainly from the Spelling Bee selling off their soul to ABC and ESPN.
The finals were preceded by an unpopular move that had some spellers and the parents claiming the bee was unfair and had kowtowed too much to television.
Concerned that there wouldn’t be enough spellers left to fill the two-hour slot on ABC, organizers stopped the semifinals in the middle of a round Friday afternoon — and declared that the 10 spellers onstage would advance to the prime-time broadcast, including six who didn’t have to spell a word in the interrupted round. Essentially, the alphabetical order of the U.S. states helped determine which spellers got to move on the marquee event.
None of this takes the shine away from Anamika, who had to endure a harrowing 3 minutes of commercial break to spell the word that clinched the contest.
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