He was in the pool in Rome for less than two minutes on Saturday but whipped up much attention for his sport and a fair amount of passion back home in India. By breaching the Olympic Qualifying Time (OQT) for the 200m Butterfly swimming event in the Settecolli Swimming Meet in Rome, Sajan Prakash has trained the spotlight on himself and his sport.
The 27-year-old set a new National Record time of 1:56.38 to go under the OQT by a tenth of a second. Having gone to the Rio in 2016 on a Universality Place after not making the OQT, he has now earned himself a ticket to the Olympic Games by the dint of his hard work through pain and pandemic. He has given himself the chance to do better in Tokyo than in 2016.
Indeed, this has been quite a journey for Indian swimmers, not just for Sajan Prakash, in the Pandemic-ridden times. They have had to endure long spells of dry-land training, deal with the frustration of not being able to enter a swimming pool, and overcome fear that they could lose the feel of water that is so important to everything they do.
In 2020, Sajan flew to Thanyapura, where he trains as a FINA scholar, but seemed to be out of sorts. He moved to Dubai for a National Camp sanctioned by the Sports Authority of India in September 2020 and stayed back after that with his coach Pradeep Kumar to get into a space from which he could take on the challenge of securing an OQT.
Significantly, he kept the clutter away from his mind.
Apparently, his age was held against him when the SFI sat down to pick athletes to back for the Olympic Games campaign. Some cited his inability to match his best performances from 2018 in the following year as the reason for not favouring him. To make things worse, a bone issue in his neck caused him considerable pain, but that was not taken in to account.
It did not seem to matter that he was competitive and finished fifth in 1:57.75 the Asian Games in Jakarta. On the contrary, his best time of 1:57.73 set in the National Championships in Thiruvananthapuram on September 23, 2018, became a benchmark. That he clocked 2:00.13 in the National Championships in Bhopal on September 3, 2019 seemed to be held against him.
Sajan Prakash himself made not a sound and focussed on his rehabilitation and training with single-minded focus on qualifying for the Olympic Games – not as a riposte to those who lost faith in him but as a need to satiate own intense desire to do something that the swimming community would talk about despite his not having an Asian Games medal.
He made the most of the one-year postponement of Tokyo2020 by recovering from a painful neck and mounting a planned assault on the OQT of 1:56.48 for the 200m Butterfly. Through the year, he has steadily chipped away time. His early season time in the Latvia Open final in Riga in February was 1:59.31 but it infused hope.
Sajan Prakash clocked 1:57.84 in the final of the Uzbekistan Open Swimming Championships in Tashkent in April. Though the event was scrapped from the list of Tokyo Qualifying meets, ostensibly for fudging the times, he believed that the OQT was within reach and returned to his base in Dubai to train for two weekends of racing in Belgrade and Rome.
With precise planning and execution, Sajan inched closer to the dream with a time of 1:56.96 in the final of the Belgrade Trophy before zeroing in on a 1:56.38 in Settecolli.in Saturday.
“I have worked very hard for this, and I was confident with the way I had trained. This was my last chance, and I knew I had to do it here. I had come so close to the qualifying mark in the previous meets, but my Coach Pradeep Sir and I planned my tapering in such a way that I would peak at these two events in Serbia and Rome,” he said in a release shared by SFI. “I believed in myself and my Coach Pradeep Kumar. Sir was the anchor and I owe this to him. I knew I had it in me, and I am glad I achieved it..
Only five days ago, the Swimming Federation of India recommended 100m Backstrokers Srihari Nataraj and Maana Patel for the Universality Places should no Indian secure an OQT. But now, India will hope that FINA will extend Srihari Nataraj an invite on the basis of his 53.90 seconds effort in Rome (OQT of 53.85) and give Maana the Universality Place.
While the good feeling that an Indian swimmer securing an Olympic Qualification Time is sweeping the social media, it is also important to stay grounded. And Sajan Prakash is himself leading the way by pointing out that there are several swimmers with better times in the 200m Butterfly at the Olympic Games than him.
The Olympic qualifying ranking list which suggests that while Sajan Prakash has risen from 63rd position after the Belgrade Trophy last week to achieve the OQT now, he is among 43 such swimmers led by Hungarian Kristof Milak (1:51.10), Italian Federico Burdisso (1:54.28_ and Japan’s Tomoru Honda (1:54.59) this year.
Rio would have been an eye-opener for him as he finished 28th out of 29 swimmers in the 200m Butterfly where he clocked 1:59.37. You can expect Sajan Prakash, who is heading to Tokyo2020 on his own steam, to come up with a more competitive showing in the Olympic Games this time around.
Image: Sajan Prakash (Courtesy: Swimming Federation of India)
