Shashruti is India's first amputee swimmer to conquer Palk Strait
2
Nagpur:
Shashruti Vinayak Nakade
added yet another first to her illustrious achievements by becoming India's first
amputee swimmer
to conquer the Palk Strait — an
open sea swimming
challenge covering 35km from Sri Lanka's Talaimannar to Tamil Nadu's Dhanushkodi.
The 21-year-old from Nagpur took 11 hours and 5 minutes to complete the solo swimming challenge alongside para swimmer Ganesh Balaga of Andhra Pradesh. Both Shashruti and Ganesh were part of a group of Indian swimmers from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and West Bengal, who successfully completed the
Palk Strait challenge
in solo and relay teams, respectively. All the Indian swimmers participated in the challenge under the leadership of Arjuna Awardee and coach of the
Indian para swimming
team at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, Prasanta Karmakar.
Born and raised in Nagpur, Shashruti completed her schooling at St Xavier's and Kendriya Vidyalaya, and is currently in her final year at Hislop College. In 2022, she represented India at the Asian Para Games and last year narrowly missed qualification in the triathlon event for the Paralympic Games.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
25 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Kalyan Chaubey adds twist to ISL return plans: ‘Leave no stone unturned', but timeline still under cloud
The future of Indian football has been placed in great jeopardy in recent weeks, with the domestic season suspended as the All India Football Federation races to try and renew the investment and marketing contracts signed during the Indian Super League's inception in 2010. Kalyan Chaubey during a press conference for the AIFF.(HT_PRINT) However, with plenty of fears surrounding the state of Indian football, AIFF president Kalyan Chaubey finally had some good news to share. In a conversation with Revssportz, Chaubey revealed that positive progress has been made, and provided a rough timeline for when some concrete movement might be seen. 'Detailed discussions took place about every aspect, which comprised of five major points,' explained Chaubey. 'I would like to infer that ISL should happen and I am hopeful about that.' 'Major issues are that the marketing [deals] that got signed in 2010 have to be renewed in 2025 and another constitutional case from 2017 is about to get its judgement in 2025 – these two coinciding has given rise to the uncertainty of the league,' explained Chaubey regarding the roadblocks. '2.5 to 3 months to resolve…' 'In spite of these hurdles, India being a country where football is so popular, I would say AIFF would leave no stone unturned to take measures for making this league possible,' he said. Further, he went on to state that there is a window in mind for the ISL, with an attempt being made to bring football to the country while that process takes place. 'As an alternative, we are thinking if we can bring the Super Cup ahead of ISL, which usually takes place after the (ISL) season,' he explained. 'So, in case these matters take time to resolve, which is approximately two and a half to three months, then we can still have the league till 31st of May which is usually the end of the season.' The ISL is currently suspended, which in conjunction with the national men's team's poor run of form has caused a crisis of confidence in the workings of the AIFF and domestic football. However, when quizzed about how to rectify these issues, Chaubey remained staunch that investment and a long-term roadmap are integral. 'The league's marketing rights are getting over this year, and for overall growth, investors are required, a long-term development plan and a clarity for the next 15-20 years is required,' concluded the AIFF president.
Hindustan Times
26 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Vece Paes: A Man for All Seasons
Siliguri: They say, 'Never meet your heroes.' Those people obviously never enjoyed the calming, charming, chuckle-a-minute company of Vece Paes, the winner of an Olympic bronze medal with the India hockey team in Munich 1972 and a doctor of medicine with a pioneering role in the anti-doping initiatives of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), who died in his adopted city of Kolkata on Thursday at the age of eighty. Dr. Vece Paes after a practice session with his son and tennis player Leander Paes at the SDAT Stadium, Chennai on Thursday. (HT) Except that, leaving aside fans of a certain vintage, of course, Dr. Paes was better known as father to a hero. Indian tennis legend Leander Paes tore up the Davis Cup arena with a series of rousing victories against fancied opponents in the 1990s and emulated his father by winning an Olympic bronze medal in singles in Atlanta 1996. The paternal bond Vece Paes shared with Leander Paes ran deep and had its roots in his own, more complicated relationship with his father. A Goan Christian, and not an Anglo-Indian as many mistook him to be, Vece Paes was born to Peter Paes of Assolna and Marlaque, who belonged to the D'Costa family of Velim. Brought up by the D'Costas since the age of four, after a sojourn in Tanzania in East Africa where Peter Paes worked as a doctor, Vece Paes followed the family's tradition and went to Bangalore to study at St. Joseph's. There, he made full use of the school's insistence on achieving excellence in both academics and sports, including cricket, football and hockey. He remembered meeting Richard Allen, the winner of three Olympic gold medals with the hockey teams from pre-independence India who was the games master at Bishop's Cotton College in Bangalore, at an inter-school match. 'We beat them hollow in hockey,' Vece Paes recalled. As someone who always believed sporting excellence comes from hours of practice, Vece Paes knew the importance of those formative years. However, Vece Paes's hockey career bloomed only after he arrived in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1963 to study at St. Xavier's as part of his preparation to pursue medicine, another family tradition that saw his father as well as three of his siblings becoming doctors. Calcutta was a city where the sporting ethos of the British still flourished. Vece Paes fondly remembered the crucial role played by Father Cecil K. Leeming, his teacher at St. Xavier's, in helping him pursue hockey, a plan vehemently opposed by Peter Paes who thought it would be a hindrance to his son' career in medicine. Gurbux Singh, another proud Kolkatan who won an Olympic gold in Tokyo 1964 and an Olympic bronze in Mexico 1968, remembers Vece Paes joining the East Bengal hockey team in 1966 while still at St Xavier's. 'Later, we both shifted to Mohun Bagan, where we played together for thirteen years, winning nine Beighton Cups and nine Calcutta League titles,' Singh said. A supremely fit athlete, Vece Paes mostly played as centre half. He was sound in defence and quick to attack. He swiftly made it to the Bengal state team and then made his India debut at a tournament in Hamburg in 1966 under the captaincy of Gurbux Singh. He was unlucky to miss out on selection for the 1968 Mexico Olympics where Gurbux Singh was the joint-captain. 'That's why Gurbux is always nice to me,' Vece Paes would joke. He did make it to the India team sent to the 1972 Olympics, thereby fulfilling a long-standing dream. By then, Vece Paes had joined NRS Medical College and qualified as a doctor, specialising in general surgery. Calcutta's traffic sergeants must have gotten weary of the sight of the young doctor tearing up the city streets in his scooter, and for a short while in a battered ambassador, in a bid to reach the Maidan in time for Mohun Bagan's matches in the afternoon. 'He would be tying up his shoelaces and putting on his shorts while we started with ten men,' Singh said. Vece Paes married former India basketball player Jennifer Dutton, a great-granddaughter of the famous Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and they had three children, Jacqueline, Maria and Leander. Juggling the responsibilities of a young family, a fledgling career in medicine and the requirements of top-drawer hockey proved impossible after a while. 'I had a short career as an international hockey player,' Vece Paes was happy to concede. Vece Paes and Jennifer also separated while relatively young and Vece Paes lived with his partner, Juliana Van Steensel. The young Leander Paes was crazy about football. 'He would literally take the muddy football to bed at night,' Vece Paes recalled. However, frequent seizures at the age of six meant Leander Paes was told to avoid full-contact sport. He took up tennis later. According to Vece Paes, that was why his son hit the tennis ball funny, as famously noted by Andre Agassi in his autobiography, Open: he never had the 10,000 hours of practice at tennis that one requires to master a skill. As Leander Paes's tennis career took off, Vece Paes took to accompanying him whenever he could and it was then that he decided to shift towards sports medicine. Vece Paes went on to play a crucial role in setting up BCCI's anti-doping programme and doing the same in other countries under the Asian Cricket Council as part of former BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya's grand plans of globalising the sport. Parkinson's slowed Vece Paes down in his last years, but could never dampen his spirit. He was certainly a hero and one who was worth meeting, again and again. The sun will shine a little less bright over Kolkata tomorrow.
The Hindu
26 minutes ago
- The Hindu
AUS A vs IND A, 2nd unofficial ODI LIVE streaming info: Where to watch India women's tour of Australia?
India A faces Australia A in the second of a three-match unofficial One-Day series on Friday. The Radha Yadav-led Indian side registered its first win of the tour Down Under, beating Tahlia McGrath's Australia by three wickets in the opening One-Day match. The win came after India A had lost all three T20s. LIVE STREAMING INFO When is the Australia A women vs India A women 2nd unofficial One-day match? The Australia A women vs India A women 2nd unofficial One-day match will begin at 9:30 am local time on Thursday, August 15 (5 am IST on Thursday) at the Ian Healy Oval in Brisbane. Where to watch the Australia A women vs India A women 2nd unofficial One-day match LIVE? The Australia A women vs India A women 2nd unofficial One-day match will be streamed live on the Fancode platform.
