A 14-year-old Dhinidhi Desinghu making her Olympics debut is seen as a big deal in India, and rightly so. She is going to participate in the women’s 200m freestyle event on July 28, but let’s be clear, she is not in the running for a medal, or to even make the semis of the event. She is pitted in heat 1 along with swimmers from Nepal, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Albania, among whom she’s the best of the lot with a personal best of 2:04.24s.
But that doesn’t account for much, as even if she betters her time by a couple of seconds, which is a great improvement, she would have a worse timing than other 25 swimmers in her event. Where does it put her, when we talk about the global standards? What does it show about the Indian swimming setup? Perhaps, we aren’t just good enough when it comes to the..forget the Olympics, not even good enough for the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games as well.
Indian Swimming at Same Level as 8 Years Back?
At the Olympics 2024, apart from Dhinidhi, only one other athletes, Srihari Nataraj has made the cut for an event in the pool — 100m backstroke. Two Olympic entries for 40-odd events in swimming — that reflects poorly on the sports setup. While some of the stronger nations are competing for all the medals in the pool, we don’t even have qualification in all of them.
Of course, it is not the swimmers’ fault, but where does the buck really stop? It seems, we are moving in the backwards direction for now. Last time, at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Srihari Nataraj & Sajan Prakash got the ‘A’ standard qualification in men’s 100m backstroke, men’s 100m butterfly, and men’s 200m butterfly, while Maana Patel got a Universality quota in women’s 100m backstroke.
This time, Sajan is not in the fray, so isn’t Maana, and the two qualifications for India in Olympics 2024 in swimming, are through Universality quotas. This sounds the same situation like 2016 Rio, where two swimmers — Sajan and Shivani Kataria were given the same quotas; so essentially, our level is pretty much the same, where it was eight years back.
We Don’t Stand Anywhere in Asia Too
For long, swimming wasn’t considered to be a strong sport for the Asians. But over the last two decades, China, and Japan have really picked up pace. There are other smaller nations too, who are making rapid progress, except for India. Our last medal in pool at the Asian Games, came by Sandeep Sejwal in 2014, where he won the bronze in 50m breastroke. On the flipside, nations who don’t have a great sporting background, are starting to win Olympic medals in the pool too.
In 2008, Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry had won four medals alone in the pool, that included a gold as well. Another African nation, Suriname has two swimming medals to their name.
So now, it’s only time that things start changing for better in India as well, as far as pool events is concerned. Because if at any point of time, India has to become a sporting nation, and want to compete with the likes of USA, China, and Australia, swimming will have to play a major role in it.
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