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.

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“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.