India’s swimming aspiration at Olympics take shape at IIS high-performance programme

Kushagra Rawat has a dream. “My main target is the Olympics, every athlete wants to be an Olympian,” he says as the oval-shaped dents around his eyes, the afters from wearing swimming goggles for long spells, peer at you.

The 24-year-old was to debut at the Tokyo Games but an injury prevented him from competing. He was in Hangzhou for the Asian Games, and at the World Championships too, but they do not have the same ring to them as the Olympics. 

He’s starting from scratch, training at the Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS) in Vijayanagar. Kushagra is one of the A-listers at IIS’ new Mizuho High Performance Swimming Programme.

Swimming is a golden goose of sorts at the Summer Games. In 2020, the sport had 35 events with 111 medals up for grabs. Though the number of medals has increased in recent editions, swimming, part of the programme since the inaugural Olympics in 1896, has always offered the highest bounty.

Some have cracked this code. The United States of America (USA) has 580 swimming medals, 257 being gold. That is over 32% of the total medals contested in the pool since 1896. Australia sits next with 213 medals. It had just 29 medals till 1952, but starting with the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, Australia made a searing ascent in the sport.

But the fact that even sporting powerhouses Great Britain, Russia, and Japan are yet to breach the 100-medal mark implies the code is maybe not the easiest to crack.

India, in comparison, has been a nation with modest aspirations, mostly occupied with sports that are intrinsically rooted in its rural populace – wrestling, boxing, and hockey to name a few. But to have just two swimmers qualify for the Olympics with an ‘A’ qualification timing (Sajan Prakash and Srihari Nataraj in 2020) pulls the lid off the uncomfortable reality of how far behind India is. The ‘A’ qualifying times are based on the 16 fastest times from the previous Olympic Games.

There have been isolated success stories in Sandeep Sejwal and Virdhawal Khade at the Asian level but India has not even scratched the surface. For a nation obsessed with heroes, the lack of them in swimming has mostly kept the sport on the fringes.

“I don’t think it’s only in India. I think it’s a global phenomenon and that is what [winning medals] starts to get young people motivated and starts to give them a dream. I mean, we saw the same thing in South Africa when in 2004, the men’s relay team won an Olympic gold medal. We saw an implosion of sprinters in South Africa and that’s just a natural phenomenon,” Rushdee Warley, the Chief Executive Officer of IIS, says.

Warley’s history with the sport piques his interest in the swimming programme even though he has an all-encompassing role at IIS, which has been stable for Olympic athletes Neeraj Chopra, and Vinesh Phogat among others in recent years. Warley has worked as a high-performance specialist with Swimming South Africa and High-Performance Sport New Zealand and wants to bring the learnings to India.

As self-explanatory as it may sound, high performance is a term loosely thrown around in sports. Warley tries to explain how it can be used to improve athletes: It’s the combination of elements that drive athletes to deliver the performances that are the best that they can provide at that particular point in time. It starts with the coaching element, the daily training environment.

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It’s about sports science that makes a difference to the performance. And as you said it’s loosely thrown around, but what I would like to think about high performance is that it’s the systems and processes that are put in place to allow people to fulfil their potential. That could be an Olympic medal, a state medal, a national medal, or a national record.”

However, the one step that precedes high-performance training is having enough people to train. “I think it’s about changing the perception of swimming, changing the culture, and taking it to many more people. What’s important is creating that groundswell of young people coming into the sport with good technical abilities, which means good teaching. It’s important that we create that opportunity for more people to enter the sport,” he adds.

IIS has also partnered with the Odisha government to build 50-metre pools in each district of the state. The facilities are catering to around 6000 athletes. For India, having public swimming pools would be the first step in the pursuit of emulating powerhouses like the US and Australia, where easy access ensures there are enough suitors for the sport which in turn keeps the culture thriving.

Kushagra had a ring-side view of this culture when he trained in Gold Coast, Australia to prepare for the Tokyo Olympics. “I have trained in Australia with Mack Horton. The major difference is obviously mindset. I have seen them struggling in the water but they would still push, still give their 100 percent even if they are hurting. And then the second is the team spirit in them. If someone is giving an all out, say a 400-metre dive, for example, the whole team will cheer. Like the whole team will be there supporting. That’s a good thing. And the sporting environment, there’s a lot of positivity in them,” Kushagra says.

Kushagra’s coach at IIS, Arilson Champam, vouches for a change in mentality among Indian swimmers as well. Champam trained the Brazil team for the 2012 and 2016 Olympics in London and Rio, respectively, before moving with the Korean team for the 2020 Games. “The people have good potential but you need to change your mindset up here [points to the head]. Too many emotions, too much respect. The USA does not respect anybody. Just believe in yourself. Do not mistake me, be respectful outside the swimming pool, but not during competition. When you guys are swimming in the national competitions, you guys are lions,” Champam says.

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As much as multiple voices within the setup echo ambition, Warley minces no words in setting the record straight – change will take time. “A good programme takes seven to eight years to take form. What I’ve observed is that one of the biggest challenges is this drive for short-term success, especially with younger athletes. We push them hard, beyond their limits, which eventually leads to breaking them up,” Warley says.

For a country with just two swimmers in Paris, a more prudent approach will be setting sight at the Asian and Commonwealth Games in 2026. 

“I think for us, ‘A’ category qualification is the first parameter of success. While we are very hopeful that we can have some of our swimmers do that by 2028, the success or failure of this program will be decided by the 2032 Olympics. If we cannot produce a single ‘A’ category qualification in the 2032 Olympic Games then we can safely say that this program has not been successful. There are a lot of milestones in between – the Commonwealth Games, which is competitive in swimming. So we want to make sure that we keep growing in each of these milestones, and that’s the journey we’re on right now,” Parth Jindal, founder of IIS, says.

The institute would perhaps draw inspiration from its tale with track and field sports. Neeraj Chopra’s gold medal in javelin throw opened up an avenue for others to try. India winning a medal in swimming might be an overzealous proposition at present, but IIS has done it once already.

“Nobody could have imagined that India would win an Olympic gold in javelin. When we started this program, that was the dream. Today, when I sit here, people will ask, ‘Can India win a medal in the Olympics in swimming?’ It is unheard of. But sitting here today, the dream has changed, the ambition has changed, and we know that it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” Parth says.