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 Early defeats spurred an inner competitive streak that they
used to eventually seize the title, said champions from 1985,
1999 and 2010. The 2017 national spelling bee winner will be
crowned on Thursday.
"Those were tough losses but they also made me dig deeper and
work harder," said Balu Natarajan, 45, who flamed out on the
national stage in 1983 and 1984. He won the next year at age 13
and is now a sports medicine doctor in Chicago.
Nupur Lala, 32, still remembers the word that tripped her up in
1998: commination, which ironically means the act of threatening
divine vengeance. She took the title in 1999 at 14.
"It was one of the really healthy moments in my life. Any hubris
that I had was eliminated at that point," said Lala, headed for
a 2018 medical school degree with a focus in neurology after
conducting research at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer
Center in Houston.
For 2010 winner Anamika Veeramani, losing in front of a
worldwide audience on live television in 2009 was a seminal
lesson in handling life's challenges.
"In the spelling bee, you really learn how to deal with failure.
And dealing with those things gracefully is really important to
living a good life," said Veeramani, 21.
She graduated last week with a biology degree after just three
years at Yale University and is applying to medical school. She
envisions practicing patients as well as launching a broadcast
career covering medical stories.
Defeat has fanned the competitive fires within, all three past
winners said in separate interviews.
"The competition is not with other spellers but with yourself,"
Lala told Reuters. "I don't think that besting other people is
quite as motivating for me."
Natarajan, who is chief medical officer at Seasons Hospice &
Palliative Care, the nation's largest privately owned hospice
provider, agreed he has been his own fiercest rival.
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"Some people love to win. Some people want to keep pushing to be
their best. I am the latter," he said.
Natarajan won the title for correctly spelling 'milieu,' Lala for
'logorrhea' and Veeramani for 'stromuhr,' after their opponents had
stumbled.
And how do the world's best spellers handle errors in emails,
classroom lessons, or even romantic love letters? Do they point out
corrections or suffer in silence?
"I don't hesitate," Natarajan said. "It drives me crazy."
But Lala and Veeramani hold their tongues.
"I don't want to be obnoxious. Nobody wants to be that kid,"
Veeramani said.
This week, 291 whizzes ages six to 15 will descend on a resort in
the Washington area to compete in the 90th Scripps National Spelling
Bee.
They have made the cut from more than 11 million contenders who
faced off in spelling bees in all 50 U.S. states, U.S. territories
from Puerto Rico to Guam, and several nations from Jamaica to Japan.
Natarajan, a married father of boys 8 and 11, said his elder child
just missed competing in the national bee this year, coming in
second in a countywide spelling competition. If losing really is the
key to winning, that may be great news.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New Yorkl; Editing by Colleen
Jenkins and Jeffrey Benkoe)
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