Most swimmers left to find funds for training and competition before Asian Games

There can be no debating that any country aspiring to do well in multidiscipline events will have to win multiple medals in athletics and swimming, sports which offer the most medals. And it would appear that some officials, charged with driving Indian sport forward, have all but given up the swimming dream. 

India won a gold, a silver and four bronze medals in the inaugural Asian Games in New Delhi in 1951. Since then, in 18 editions of the Asian Games, India has added but three medals to the collection – a 200m Butterfly silver for Khajan Singh in 1986 and bronze medals for Virdhawal Khade (50, Butterfly, 2010) and Sandeep Sejwal (100m Breaststroke, 2014).

In the last Asian Games in Hangzhou, Sajan Prakash (200m butterfly) and the men’s 4x100 medley relay team finished fifth. Srihari Nataraj, Advait Page and Likith and the 4x100m Freestyle Relay team were the other men who qualified for finals.  There were two women’s relay teams that earned berths in the finals despite not having trained together. 

Yet, instead of finding ways to help these swimmers raise their game and make it to Asian Games podium, the thinktank has appeared to have turned its back on nearly all of them. There is no swimmer in the Target Olympic Podium Development Scheme (TOPS) Core Group and Dhinidhi Desinghu is the only one chosen in the TOPS Development Group. 

Based on a report in a local daily last week, no swimmer has been chosen in the Target Asian Games Group (TAGG).  Whether it is the direct result of meagre returns in the Asian Games or of some bureaucratic oversight is hard to say. The more optimistic will like to believe that India’s thought leaders are working at ways to make swimming a part of India’s sports growth story.

The Target Olympic Podium Scheme benchmarks Indian swimmers against performances in the Olympic Games and World Championships. But the Target Asian Games Group should have considered that and included some deserving swimmers for support for next year’s continental competition. Just because a sport is in the TOPS framework should not exclude it from TAGG.

As a result, the swimmers will have to raise their own resources for training and competition ahead of next year’s Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya. Of course, they can get the Swimming Federation of India (SFI) to secure funding through its Annual Calendar for Training and Competition scheme of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports’ Assistance to National Sports Federation.

Working with SFI, the Sports Authority of India could have sent positive signals to the swimming community by finding ways to raise the standards of the sport in India rather let dark clouds of doubt gather.  Leaving all, but one, to their devices, does not augur well for the sport either in the short term or long.

The wise folk may sit back and bask by saying that there are 149 swimmers identified as Khelo India Athletes for support under the Khelo India Scheme. Only a  handful of these swimmers are training in four Khelo India Accredited Academies and get the full Rs 6.28 lakh annual support while others would get only the out of pocket allowance of Rs 1.20 lakh each year.

Sadly, of the 33 notified Khelo India Centres of Excellence across the country, only the Sports Authority  of Goa Complex in Campal, Panaji, has any swimmers, 17 of them. The Jayaprakash Narayan National Youth Centre in Bengaluru, the only other Khelo India Centre of Excellence approved for swimming, has no swimmers.

It is a sad reflection that there are only 206 swimmers who train in 14 active Khelo India Centres for the sport across seven States. Each of these numbers tells a story of its own. Of course, so many academies and swimmers would be out of the Khelo India ambit, with corporates like Glenmark and, more recently, JSW’s Inspire Institute of Sports doing their bit.

On its part, SFI has shown an inclination to move away from performance led talent selection to an attributes-led talent identification for 2032 and 2036 Olympic Games. It has even articulated a National Programme for Development to try and enhance India’s performance in the international arena.

In what could be seen as a tacit admission that its 2020 strategy for competitive swimming in India had not taken off, SFI unveiled the National Talent Pool Development Programme in August last year. This coincided with the appointment of the vastly experienced Chris Martin  as the National Programme Director.

These are long-term strategies. While not ignoring the 2026 Asian Games and 2028 Olympic Games in the vision document, SFI has been mindful of how this lot of swimmers trains under various coaches/academies with very little or no oversight on their progress, training methodology, reporting of injury, sport specific assessments. 

“Though athletes and coaches are beneficiaries of various schemes through either the Ministry or the Sports Authority of India, they remain individually unaccountable for the outcomes,” SFI wrote. “If the Federation is to be accountable for the India’s overall performance on the global stage, it is imperative that a National Programme for Development be led by it.”

Yet, while the swimmers train with their personal coaches and in pools of their choice, SFI will have to find ways to support their quest to do well in the Asian Games next year. These can include impressing on the Mission Olympic Cell to support those with potential of making it to the finals and with the hunger of adding to the list of Indian swimming medalists in the Asian Games.