Swimming team cleared

NEW DELHI, October 27: The Sports Ministry's monitoring committee, which met here last week, has in principle cleared the participation o...

NEW DELHI, October 27: The Sports Ministry’s monitoring committee, which met here last week, has in principle cleared the participation of an Indian swimming squad in the Bangkok Asian Games in December. The Indian Swimming Federation (SFI) which last sent a team to the Asian Games in 1986 the year Khazan Singh won a silver had not fielded teams in the last two Asian Games.

The committee, consisting members from the Sports Authority of India (SAI), SFI, Indian Olympic Association and the government nominee, after a long deliberation aceeded to the the federation’s request and agreed to send a team this time, provided the swimmers met the standards set by the Indian Olympic Association. The qualification time was that of the third place timing of the Hiroshima Games.

Twenty five swimmers — 15 men and 10 women — were closely watched at the two-day trials at the Talkatora Pool by National coach K.V. Sharma, Wilson Cherian and Khazan Singh. Of the ten girls, Nisha Millet of Karnataka clocked 2:08.65 seconds, which was two hundredths of a second slower than the third placed finisher at Hiroshima in 1994.

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Richa Mishra of Delhi and Nisha’s statemate Shika Tandon also showed good promise at the trial and with 4×400 metre relay event having been included for the first time in the Games, the SFI is likely to send a relay squad in the women’s section. With the threesome having `almost’ qualified for the Games, the SFI is looking to fill the fourth person from among Reshma, Meghna Narayan, Abhinaya Shetty (both of Karnataka) and Shruti Mukundan of Tamil Nadu.

The SFI will be conducting another trial to pick the fourth person to join the three in the main squad along with a reserve. The women’s relay squad will also compete in the 4x100m event but none is likely to be entered in any individual event.

However, the SFI is looking to pit its men in the individual events with Sebastian Xavier of Railways spearheading the challenge. The Railway swimmer, who has been ruling the pool for the last eight years, clocked sub-23 in the 50 metres in the Bangalore Nationals a couple of months ago. Along with him, Delhi’s Sandeep Kakkar is expected to be part of the Indian men’s squad. There may be a couple of other male members added to the list after one last trial some time next week. Suresh Kumar of the Railways and P. Kailashnath of the Police look to be a certainty to make the team.