Indian swimmers are not letting go of any opportunity coming their way to train, race, excel and improve upon. Indian swimmers are back after winning 29 medals at the recently concluded Uzbekistan Open Swimming Championships, FINA-accredited Olympic qualifying event held at
Tashkent from 12th April to 17th April 2021.
Indian swimmers won 18 gold, 7 sliver & 4 bronze medals. Sajan Prakash won four gold medals. Srihari Natraj, Chahat Arora, Maana Patel & Divya Satija won two gold medals each. Danush S. won gold and two bronze medals. Kenisha Gupta won three gold medals. Shivani Kataria and Suvana Baskar won two silvers and one gold medal each. Likhit S.P. won two silver medals and Adhithya Dinesh won a silver medal. Tanish Gorge Mathews and Ananad S won a bronze medal each.
This was after a very long time that Indian swimmers got to participate in any international competition post lockdown. The star performers were Srihari Natraj & Sajan Prakash. Srihari again improved upon the best Indian performance in 50meters and 100meters backstroke. He clocked 25.11 sec in 50 Back and 54.07sec in 100 back-stroke respectively.
Srihari clocked his personal best of 54.10sec in the heats before bettering it to 54.07sec in the final to win the gold. He missed the Olympic ‘A’ qualification mark in the event by just 0.22 seconds and on the other hand Sajan Prakash competing in his favorite event, the 200m butterfly clocked 1.57.85sec, missing the Olympics ‘A’ cut which is set at 1:56.48sec.
With the Tokyo clock clicking all eyes are now on the next Olympic qualifier event, four to five weeks from now. All are hoping that history will be created & ‘A’ cut for Tokyo Olympics will be
achieved. Olympic A qualification will ensure direct participation in Olympics. Keeping a close eye on 29th June 2021 the deadline for the Tokyo Olympics Indian swimmers are going all out for it.
According to Pradeep Kumar, National Coach and Dronacharya Awardee, “Competition was ok for men. Even though there was not much competition for girls, still our girls did very well. Overall our swimmers gave pretty good timings considering they are racing after a long gap.”
Indian Team Coach Sandeep Sejwal said, “It was an overwhelming experience for me to travel with team India again after almost 3 years, and to see how the younger generation of swimmers growing up as professional swimmers. As a coach, I am very happy to see Indian Swimming catching up with the world faster than ever before.”