Washington, May 23: Sathwik Karnik, a 12-year-old Indian-American boy, has won the prestigious National Geographic Bee contest after getting all five questions right as the children of community members continue to dominate the geography bee and the spelling bee competitions in the US.
To clinch the title, Karnik correctly named Chimborazo as the mountain in Ecuador that represents the farthest point from the Earth's centre.
Karnik, whose parents emigrated to the US as software professionals from Karnataka, got all five questions right in his one-on-one contest with 13-year-old Conrad Oberhaus, the runner-up.
Karnik, a native of Norfolk, south of Boston, is a 7th grader at King Philip Regional Middle School.
The national competition this time round turned out to be dominated by the Indian-Americans even as in the finals held in Washington yesterday, eight of the 10 finalists, who competed among the four million participants for the competition, were Indian-Americans.
In addition to Karnik, the third place was grabbed by Sanjeev Uppaluri, 11, fifth-grader at Fulton Sunshine Academy in Roswell, a suburb of Atlanta and the fourth place went to Virginia's Akhil Rekulapelli, 12, seventh-grader at Stone Hill Middle School in Ashburn.
Karnik will take home the spoils of the Bee prize that include a USD 25,000 college scholarship, an all-expenses paid trip to the Galapagos Islands, and a lifetime membership to the National Geographic Society, National Geographic reported.
In the geography bee, Akshay Rajagopal won the contest in 2008 while the 2012 competition was won by Rahul Nagvekar.
In the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Indian-origin people remain unchallenged since 2008. Sameer Mishra (2008), Laodicean Kavya Shivashankar(2009), Anamika Veeramani (2010), Sukanya Roy (2011) and Snigdha Nandipati (2012).
