Srihari, Sajan among swimmers heading for Serbia, Rome

In an attempt to aid the swimmers in their bid to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, the Swimming Federation of India on Tuesday confirmed that they have sent a team to participate in events in Serbia and Italy.

The team, which includes Bengaluru’s Srihari Nataraj, left for Serbia in the early hours of Wednesday morning to compete in the Belgrade Trophy, a FINA-accredited Olympic Qualifying event, scheduled on June 19-20th, 2021.

Srihari will be joined by Sajan Prakash who is presently training in Dubai and is expected to reach Belgrade by June 12. Both swimmers have made the ‘B’ qualification time and are trying to secure an ‘A’ qualification berth, which will be a first in Indian history.

The team also includes Maana Patel, Aryan Nehra, Shoan Ganguli, Tanish Mathew and Kenisha Gupta who are part of the TOPS (Target Olympic Podium Scheme) development group.

Speaking about the competitions, Srihari cut an optimistic figure despite a less than ideal training situation, with the state under lockdown for well over a month. “Training has not been ideal for something like what we are trying to do here, which is to get the ‘A’ qualification mark for the Olympics. We are going early, we will be able to spend 10 days to train there before,” he said.