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Time of India
08-08-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
Aarohi wins rare national medal in 200m butterfly
Competing in a tough field, Aarohi Borde clocked 2:33.65 to secure the bronze, finishing just behind Angarika Saikia (2:33.45) and gold medallist Sanithi Mukherjee (2:31.65) Panaji: Aarohi Borde did her growing reputation no harm when she picked up a medal in girls' 200m butterfly event at the 51st Junior National Aquatic Championships at Ahmedabad earlier this week. Competing in a tough field, Aarohi clocked 2:33.65 to secure the bronze, finishing just behind Angarika Saikia (2:33.45) and gold medallist Sanithi Mukherjee (2:31.65). 'Aarohi is the first swimmer from Goa to have won a medal in an event like 200 butterfly at competitions organised by the Swimming Federation of India,' said one official. 'This milestone marks a significant achievement for Goa in competitive swimming.' The 14-year-old was part of a strong Goa contingent which also included Adi Signapurkar, Pooja Rawool, Vihaan Pednekar, Suhans Desai, Yohann Peter Homem, and Dwayne Clement. Since taking to competitive swimming, Aarohi has been making heads turn at the pool in Campal. She won a gold (200m butterfly) and a silver (100m butterfly) at the National School Games in Rajkot last year, her first success at the national level. Since then, she hasn't looked back. Aarohi's pet event remains the 200m butterfly and she has chalked off almost 30 seconds since the Khelo India trials in Oct 2022 when she began training under TA Sujith, a champion swimmer who famously ended Sebastian Xavier's 11-year reign as the country's fastest swimmer in 2000. Stay updated with the latest local news from your city on Times of India (TOI). Check upcoming bank holidays , public holidays , and current gold rates and silver prices in your area. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Raksha Bandhan wishes , messages and quotes !
The Hindu
04-07-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
Chris Martin Indian swimming big road to hope
In a little more than a year, National Programme Director Chris Martin, a seasoned swim coach who has worked in leading nations such as the USA, Great Britain and China, has identified what prevents Indian swimmers from reaching the elite level. He has also started working on a long-term vision. In order to assess the situation, Martin first conducted three-day workshops in different States, including Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Kerala and Karnataka. 'The honest opinion is that he believes our Indian coaching system [to be] caught [up] in the 80s,' said Swimming Federation of India (SFI) secretary Monal Chokshi. Consequently, Martin has conducted some courses 'which are finding acceptance among younger coaches'. The SFI is also carrying out a National Talent Pool (NTP) programme, looking to make a mark by 2030. Recently, it sent 30 swimmers in their late teens for a high altitude camp in Armenia and expects positive results in the coming months. During the National aquatics championships in Bhubaneswar in the last week of June, Martin spoke to The Hindu about the overall health of Indian swimming. Excerpts: What have you seen in one year? I was brought here to do a two-tier project — to do coach education and open a development pathway and try to get the kids on long-term athlete development. In a year, I've seen us get started in both, but I've also seen the tremendous amount that has to be done for that to succeed. Can you highlight the areas of improvement? We have to take a long-term athlete development approach. That involves a certain amount of training in a certain amount of years and to not be completely obsessed with medals along the way. If I open your newspaper, they'll say so-and-so won five never tell me the age…[and] the time. To get to the world standard, those are the two most important things. I feel we've made some efforts in both, really educating the kids on how they grow up and how training is presented to them about what they can do down the line rather than what they can just get right now. You're working with different coaches and systems all over the country. I also work for World Aquatics in coach education. I kind of brought one of the systems that we've done there to here. We've got an online introduction and then we have Level 1 and 2 courses. We've already put 100 coaches through Level 1 and another 80 in the wait-list from the online version. We've had 40 go through Level 2. The coaches' education, the expansion of knowledge is ongoing. Looking at the advanced countries, what is the best model for India to follow? The people that get to the top of the Olympic Games take an LTAV [Long Term Asset Value] approach — they're building people like you grow a tree. No one's measuring a tree by how many inches it grows in each year because it's organic. And, human beings are of the problems here is that there's a whole lot of swimming for money. Learn to swim, it's all cash business. People want to rush to have a five-year-old swim too long, or a six-year-old do this gets you set off on the wrong way. It has to match the growth rates of the kids. Is it like what they say in athletics, 'Don't specialise so early'? True, you don't want to do that. We've made some trying to take the 50-metre events out of the kids too young so that they can at least get some aerobic development. We've tried to separate the sub-juniors from the juniors because we have 11-year-olds saying, 'I'm the champion of India'. If you do that, what's the incentive for them to be the real champion of India, or even the champion of the world? Does the system, or the swimmers or the coaches, need to unlearn something? That's a tough all of them need to do is to stop focusing on age group success. Most of the people that are in the Olympic finals, they are people that made the final push in their late teens, early twenties, and no one told them they were great when they were 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. That needs to be unlearned. Should there not be any expectations from the age group ?Yeah, where I come from [USA], people put their kids in swimming to have fun, to have an activity, to learn and grow, and to get the lessons from swimming that go into regular life. I do run into parents who put their kids in swimming and say, 'Okay, if I don't get a medal by this year or two years, I'm getting you out, and there's a better use of time and money.' Which is obviously right, but we're not going to climb the world scale with that attitude. What kind of natural talent have you seen here? I'll give you this example, and it combines your question about natural talent and what needs to be unlearned. This Odisha project with JSW, which is a fantastic thing, they've reams and reams of little kids that they're starting to teach and engage...I looked at the smallest kids [who] were swimming backstroke in a very, very good position. I went to the juniors, only 50% of them were doing that. I went to the seniors, only less than a handful. The reason? I feel when those seniors were small kids, their parents paid for them to be able to learn 'backstroke' at a ridiculously early age and the proprioceptive model of how children move was not consulted. What's the most heartening thing you've seen? The response to the NTP has been very heartening. I make the kids write a logbook in the couple of weeks they spend with me, and what they write is absolutely fascinating. What's the craziest thing? The same thing. When I had 30 kids write a logbook, and they were ready to go home, I said, 'Here's your logbooks'. They said, 'No you give them to us, our parents and coaches, mainly our parents, will want to read what's inside.' I thought that was crazy. Is it important to integrate all sorts of swimming clinics, coaching clubs? It's pretty much impossible, and what we can do is try to get a base level of what I've done with that. In terms of integration, sports seems to be a business here. People are selling certificates, credentials, programmes, support networks and all this, selling supplements, selling everything. It's impossible to integrate that when so many people are trying to make economic short-term gains. I find the people running the SFI are that has been told to me has been very reasonable. I do find there's a big road to hope. It's a large mountain.
The Hindu
27-06-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
India pins its hopes on divers at Asian swimming championships
Entrusted with the responsibility of reviving the Asian swimming championships in Ahmedabad after a nine-year gap in October, the Swimming Federation of India (SFI) is not only looking at showcasing its organisational ability but also backing its divers to achieve worthwhile results in the continental event. Competing alongside global swimming powers such as China, Japan and Korea at the newly-built 'world class venue,' India is pinning its hopes on its divers. 'There's reasonable expectation that we may have a medal in diving. We've sent our divers for a one-month training programme in Malaysia, where they can get a little bit of informal judging. Their scores can be realistically projected. An Australian coach (Shannon Roy) is working with them, particularly in the men's synchronised diving event, where we are targeting a medal. They were supposed to go to Australia for a competition, but couldn't get visas. We are looking at other competitions,' SFI secretary Monal Chokshi told The Hindu. 'We are having a water polo camp (for 25 men and 25 women) from January in Bangalore. We will be selecting the best 14 and four reserves. We are planning to send them to an eastern European country for training in the last one month of preparation. 'We will bring back one of the coaches (Babovic Miodrag and Anderic Nemanja) who were working with our teams for the Asian Games preparation, but the teams were not cleared. This Asian Championships is going to be also the Asian Games qualifier with the top-six qualifying. After 1986, we have never played at the Asian Games. So we hope to break the jinx.' The SFI expects good performances from four swimmers. 'In terms of medals, we are very unsure. We have good prospects. Srihari (Nataraj), Benediction Rohit has performed exceptionally well. We have seen some great performances from Shoan Ganguly as well as Aryan Nehra. We'll be holding the India camp for two months at the same venue,' said Chokshi.
The Hindu
27-06-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
SFI harbours medal hopes at Asian swimming championships in Ahmedabad
Entrusted with the responsibility of hosting the first edition of the Asian championships since 2016, the Swimming Federation of India (SFI) is not only looking at showcasing its organisational ability but also backing its divers and water polo teams to achieve worthwhile results in the continental event when it takes place in Ahmedabad in October. Competing alongside top countries such as China, Japan and South Korea at the newly-built 'world class venue,' India is pinning its hopes on its divers. 'There's reasonable expectation that we may have a medal in diving. We've sent our divers for a one-month training programme in Malaysia, where they can get a little bit of informal judging. Their scores can be realistically projected. An Australian coach (Shannon Roy) is working with them, particularly in the men's synchronised diving event, where we are targeting a medal. They were supposed to go to Australia for a competition, but couldn't get visas. We are looking at other competitions,' SFI secretary Monal Chokshi told Sportstar. 'We are having a water polo camp (for 25 men and 25 women) from January in Bangalore. We will be selecting the best 14 and four reserves. We are planning to send them to an eastern European country for training in the last one month of preparation. ALSO READ | Mind and body are in sync, I've developed as an athlete: Srihari Nataraj 'We will bring back one of the coaches (Babovic Miodrag and Anderic Nemanja) who were working with our teams for the Asian Games preparation, but the teams were not cleared. This Asian championships is going to be also the Asian Games qualifier with the top-six qualifying. After 1986, we have never played at the Asian Games. So we hope to break that jinx.' The SFI expects good performances from four swimmers. 'In terms of medals, we are very unsure. We have good prospects. Srihari (Nataraj), Benedicton Rohit has performed exceptionally well. We have seen some great performances from Shoan Ganguly as well as Aryan Nehra. We'll be holding the India camp for two months at the same venue,' said Chokshi. With a new swimming pool set to be inaugurated in Ahmedabad in a few days, Chokshi believes that it will help India in bidding for the 2030 Commonwealth Games and the 2036 Olympics. Chokshi said in this backdrop 'the ecosystem was very receptive to the thought of hosting a large international event' and hosting the Asian championships would 'demonstrate our capacity to hold international events'. 'Across all disciplines we would have roughly about 1500-1600 athletes (from diving, swimming, water polo and artistic swimming). The competition is staggered because it's a single 50m pool, a warm-up pool of 25m and a diving well. The swimming and diving events will start on September 26,' informed Chokshi.
The Hindu
27-06-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
India gearing up to host Asian Swimming Championships 2025
Entrusted with the responsibility of hosting the revival edition of the Asian championships in Ahmedabad in October after a nine-year gap, the Swimming Federation of India (SFI) is not only looking at showcasing its organisational ability but also backing its divers and water polo teams to achieve worthwhile results in the continental event. Competing against top countries such as China, Japan and Korea at the newly built 'world-class venue,' India is pinning its hopes on its divers. 'There's a reasonable expectation that we may have a medal in diving. We've sent our divers for a one-month training programme in Malaysia, where they can get a bit of informal judging. Their scores can be realistically projected. An Australian coach (Shannon Roy) is working with them, particularly in the men's synchronised diving event, where we are targeting a medal. They were supposed to go to Australia for a competition, but couldn't get visas. We are looking at other competitions,' SFI secretary Monal Chokshi told The Hindu. 'We are having a water polo camp (for 25 men and 25 women) from January in Bangalore. We will be selecting the best 14 and four reserves. We are planning to send them to an eastern European country for training in the last one month of preparation. 'We will bring back one of the coaches (Babovic Miodrag and Anderic Nemanja) who were working with our teams for the Asian Games preparation, but the teams were not cleared. This Asian Championship is also going to be the Asian Games qualifier, with the top six qualifying. After 1986, we have never played at the Asian Games. So we hope to break that jinx.' The SFI expects good performances from four swimmers. 'In terms of medals, we are very unsure. We have good prospects. Srihari (Nataraj), Benediction Rohit has performed exceptionally well. We have seen some great performances from Shoan Ganguly as well as Aryan Nehra. We'll be holding the India camp for two months at the same venue,' said Chokshi.
