There is much hype and excitement with the Tokyo Olympics 2021, especially for the followers of Indian Swimming. For the first time ever, not one but three Indian swimmers have qualified for the Olympics, clinching the venerated “A” Cut timings.
Now we all know the story of Sajan Prakash, the Butterfly-er from Kerala who broke the glass ceiling by becoming the first ever Indian to achieve the A-Cut by clocking 1:56:38 seconds in the men’s 200m Butterfly event at the Sette Colli Trophy in Rome, Italy. In addition, he would also be representing India in two more events, namely, 100m Butterfly and 200m Freestyle thanks to his OST (B-Cut) qualifications in these event.
Sajan was quickly followed by the young Backstroker Srihari Nataraj, who also booked a place for himself in the team by achieving the A-Cut in 100m Backstroke event. He clocked 53.77s in the men’s 100m Backstroke at the Sette Colli Trophy on Sunday. He did this is a special time-trial that was conducted for him.
Thus for the first time in history, Indian swimmers were not at the mercy of FINA to give them places at the events based on the Universality Quota. Indian swimmers Sajan and Srihari would be standing on the blocks based on their merit alone.
But in addition to these two swimmers, there is another swimmer from India that achieved the Olympic Qualification timing. In fact, he did quite sometime back, much before than either Sajan or Srihari. It was Suyash Narayan Jadhav who became the first Indian swimmer to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. He will be seen competing in the 50m Butterfly of S-7 category and the 200m Individual Medley of SM-7 category at Tokyo. The 27-year-old from Maharashtra booked his slot at the Paralympics based on his performances at the 2018 Asian Para Games held in Jakarta.
The Minimum Qualifying Standard (MQS) in 50m Butterfly was set at 32.90 seconds, Suyash had recorded a timing of 32.71 seconds in Jakarta which had also propelled him to a gold medal. On the other hand, he beat the Minimum Entry Time of 2:57.09 in 200m Individual Medley at Jakarta clocking 2:56.51 while clinching an Asian bronze.
For the past many years Suyash has been winning many medals and trophies in competitions across the world.
By a quirk of fate all the three swimmers that qualified for India share the same initial, as in ‘S’ in their names, Sajan, Srihari, Suyash.
Indeed, Maana Patel too has qualified and will be representing India, but she has done it so on the basis of Universality quota, as there were no other female swimmers that had achieved A-Cut timings.