The Indian swimming team will head to Palembang (Indonesia) on Friday for the Asian Age Group Swimming Championship with the aim of earning Olympic berths.
The seven-day meet that starts on October 8 is a qualifying tourney for the London Games and three out of the 17-member team stand a good chance of making the cut.
So far, only Virdhawal Khade (in 100m freestyle) and Sandeep Sejwal (in 100m breaststroke) have made the ‘B’ qualifying mark, attained at the 14th FINA World Championships in July. At the Asian meet, they will aim to improve their timings and also get the ‘A’ mark apart from looking at qualifying for other events. “It’s important for me to qualify in other events like the 200m breaststroke and this is the last big opportunity,” stated Sejwal, who clocked one minute, 02.62 seconds to become the first Indian swimmer to make the London Games cut.Khade clocked 50.34 seconds to qualify.
In Indonesia, all eyes
will be on Aaron D’Souza,
Talasha Prabhu and Rehan Poncha.D’Souza’s goal is
to clock under 1:50.00 in 200m freestyle.At a
time trial, Prabhu clocked 26.90 seconds in 50m freestyle. Meanwhile,
Poncha, in 200m butterfly, has been clocking between 2:03.5 and 2:06.7.
Indian swim team:
Boys: Gagan AP, Aaron D’Souza, Rehan Poncha, Saurabh Sangvekar, Ajay A (all K’taka), Virdhawal Khade (Mah), Anshul Kothari, Sujay Shah (both Guj), Sandeep Sejwal (RSPB), Jaywant Vijay Kumar (TN), Sanu Debnath (WB), Himanshu Dhakad (MP).
Girls: Kshipra Mahajan, Surabhi Tipre (both Kar), Talasha Prabhu (Goa), Richa Mishra (PSCB), Arti Ghorpade (Mah).
Comments