HANGZHOU: On Friday night, the water at the 50m swimming pool inside the Aquatic Sports Arena stopped rippling for the first time in more than a week. After six days and nights of action, the dominance was predictable. China topped the medal standings with 58 medals (28G, 21S and 9B). The only nation that managed to pick up more overall medals than China’s gold count was also predictable. Japan with 30 (5G, 10S, 15B).In all, eight nations medalled. The identity of one of the many nations that didn’t was also predictable.
India. For all the corporate speak and branding surrounding this Asian Games — “iss baar, sau paar (this time, more than 100 medals)” — they are unlikely to hit that three-figure mark unless they make a significant splash in the pool at multi-discipline Games. The reason is self-explanatory. There are more than 120 medals at stake in swimming alone (8% of all gold medals if you want to look at it that way). With Indian swimmers barely able to challenge, there’s a large proportion of medals they simply don’t contest for.
One Indian swimmer who did try and fight against the tide was Srihari Nataraj. He was part of the team that broke two national records in the relays apart from lowering the existing mark in the 200m FS. But he doesn’t want to spend too much on the new national marks. His voice is hushed and he’s obviously disappointed because ‘the long meet didn’t go as per plan but that’s how sport is’. The ‘didn’t go as per plan’ is him ruing his efforts in the 50 and the backstroke events. “I mainly came here for that. I was looking to peak in those events, everything else was a bonus.”
He finished sixth in both but comfortably outside the top three medallists. But the 22-year-old is ‘not at all satisfied’. “Lot to look at. Everything looked good, I felt good. Just need to figure out why the races didn’t click. I haven’t actually thought about it because I have been racing every single day. I haven’t had time to think about how each bad race went. I’m going to go back to Bengaluru and look at it. A little bit of everything. I haven’t figured out why things went the way they went. A little bit of everything I can work on for sure and look at the race as a whole rather than looking at just one part of the race. I can make changes to the race as a whole and think that will make a bigger difference.”
One aspect of the week in Hangzhou that pleasantly surprised him is the ‘few quick freestyle races’. “Going forward, I will definitely look at adding a few freestyle events,” Nataraj, a backstroke specialist, said. He was intimate when asked to explain the shortcomings the sport faces in India. “There’s a lot to change in terms of the system in the country. A lot has changed but there’s a lot to work on,” he said.
