Swimming Federation of India, which has shed its inertia and made some right moves in the past few months, will have to try and understand why some of the leading swimmers, especially the top breaststroke athlete, SP Likith, have chosen not to join the Sports Authority of India-approved National Camp that is due to start in Bengaluru on January 11.
Having tied up with Australian Wayne Goldsmith to enhance the knowledge of India’s coaches, SFI did well to secure SAI sanction for a pioneering camp for 18 swimmers in Bengaluru from January 11 to February 21. At a time when SAI has agreed to fund the six-week camp, SFI should have been ensuring that the country’s best swimmers were all part of it.
However, the absence of leading athletes like Likith and Olympian Sajan Prakash is worthy of introspection, something that only lead to improvement in the time ahead. It would appear that the likes of Virdhawal Khade (possibly retired), Sajan Prakash and Likith have chosen not to sign the consent forms after deciding to stay away from the National camp in Bengaluru.
Sajan Prakash, who trains under National Coach Pradeep Kumar when not in the Thanyapura Aquatics Training Centre in Phuket, Thailand, may have opted out since his coach would not be in the National Camp. Likith, who was training with coach Parth Varanshi for the last two years, is now said to be training on his own in Bengaluru.
The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic last year and the disruption it brought along could have contributed to Likith all but giving up chase of the Olympic Selection Time (B standard) (1:01.72). His personal best in 100m breaststroke (1:02.02) is but a whisper away from that mark, but he may have decided to recalibrate his goals and make the 2022 Asian Games a realistic target.
One of the most important things that SFI will have to reconsider sooner than later is its choice of and the role of chief coach. With the incumbent Pradeep Kumar based in Dubai and not assigned the National Camp in Bengaluru, the Federation will have to find someone who can oversee the evolution of India’s best swimmers by engaging with their coaches and guiding them.
With no High Performance Director in SFI rolls, the role of the chief coach becomes all the more crucial. An individual in that position cannot be seen as caring only for a handful of athletes rather than the entire bunch of elite swimmers. SFI has to engineer mindset change in the entire Indian swimming community, including athletes, parents and coaches. Easier said than done.
In the absence of any official word, it is hard to know why AV Jayaveena, Jyotsna Pansare and Soubrity Mondal, who were all part of the Indian team that did duty in the Asian Age Group Championships in Bengaluru in September-October 2019 do not figure in the list of campers.
From the sidelines, it is evident that SFI will have to work on several individual and collective mindsets to ingrain the concept of a National Camp and its advantages. From coaches to swimmers, nearly everyone will have to buy in to the idea of long camps in one or two locations in the country if India is to raise its stock in the Asian Games competition next year.
While the national camp is a good step, SFI will have to bring younger swimmer into the camp soon if the intent is to prepare a team for next year’s Asian Games in Gwangju, China. There is a good possibility that by investing in them and by grooming them right, India will reap richer dividends as early as in 2022 than in some of the older swimmers chosen for the camp.
For all that, it will be interesting to see the SFI’s expectations of improvement from the swimmers chosen for the camp. Of those invited to the camp, Kushagra Rawat and Srihari Nataraj are the only ones who have secured a B qualification for the Olympic Games. They can use the camp to drive towards the A qualification later in the year.
With a career-best time of 54.69 seconds, Srihari Nataraj is perhaps the closest to achieving the A qualification (53.85). It will have to be seen how he adapts to a new coaching regime under Nihar Ameen, having moved from AC Jayaraj’s tutelage after he returned from the camp in Dubai. Exciting as the chase of the Olympic dream can be, he must not lose sight of the Asian Games.
