Sajan Prakash A has become the first Indian swimmer to cross the Olympic qualification time. He clocked 1:56.38sec in the men’s 200m butterfly at the Sette Colli Trophy in Rome. Sajan, who played in the 2016 Rio Olympics, managed to enter the Tokyo Olympics ‘A Standard’ by 0.1 seconds. Tokyo Olympics A Standard is one minute 56.48 seconds. The Kerala swimmer clocked 1:56.96sec, which was his national record, in the Belgrade Trophy swimming competition last week.
Prakash will compete with Mana Patel in the swimming event of the Tokyo Olympics. Mana has been nominated by the Swimming Federation of India. Prakash’s direct qualifying means that Srihari Nataraja will not be able to participate in the Tokyo Olympics, who was nominated under the university quota along with Mana. Natraj missed out on qualifying in the 100m backstroke in Rome by 0.5 seconds on Friday. Under the university quota, one male and one female swimmer from the country gets the opportunity to play the Olympics provided no one has qualified directly or is not invited by FINA on the basis of Olympic selection time (B).
Sajan Prakash and Srihari Natraj won gold medals in their respective events at the Belgrade Trophy swimming competition last week, but missed out on the ‘A’ qualification level of the Tokyo Games. Prakash had won the gold medal in the men’s 200m butterfly event with a timing of 1:56.96sec in the Olympic qualifiers recognized by the global swimming body FINA. During this, he had improved his own national record of one minute 57.73 seconds set in 2018. The 27-year-old Kerala swimmer, however, missed out on the Olympic ‘A’ qualification level by a margin of 0.48 seconds. Natraj, on the other hand, won the gold medal in the 100m backstroke event with a timing of 54.45 seconds.
