Uzbekistan Open swimming | Sajan wins but falls short of A-mark
The Hindu
Olympic hopeful Sajan Prakash clinched the gold in the men’s 200m butterfly with a timing of 1:57.85s, but it was well short of the A-mark Olympic Qualifying Time (1:56.48s), at the Uzbekistan Open sw
Olympic hopeful Sajan Prakash clinched the gold in the men’s 200m butterfly with a timing of 1:57.85s, but it was well short of the A-mark Olympic Qualifying Time (1:56.48s), at the Uzbekistan Open swimming championships on Tuesday. The result, however, was a significant improvement from the timing of 1:59.31s he had clocked at the Latvian Open last month. Sajan had achieved the B-mark Olympic Time (1:59.97s) at the 2019 FINA World Championships, finishing in 1:58.45s. Also on Tuesday, Kenisha Gupta secured the gold medal in women’s 100m freestyle, coming home in 57.42s, while Shivani Kataria took the bronze (59.60s).He has worn India’s blues, albeit in an Under-19 World Cup, with K.L. Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Harshal Patel and Jaydev Unadkat as his teammates. He has proudly adorned the Lion’s Crest — the famed Mumbai cricket logo — in all three formats. He has played with Yuvraj Singh, against Virat Kohli and Rahul Dravid and has the likes of Rahul and Joe Root in his illustrious list of dismissals. He is also a software developer for an IT giant, based in California. Virtually every middle-class Indian over the last three decades at some stage dreams of being either a cricketer or an IT professional. Saurabh Netravalkar has been combining two dreams, even after relocating to USA to pursue academics at the prestigious Cornell University in 2015.
Unlike most of the Olympic-bound athletes, who opt to train abroad before the big event, boxer Amit Panghal prefers training in home conditions prior to Paris 2024. A former World championships silver medallist and a World No. 1, Panghal won the 51kg quota place in the only chance he got. He wants to follow his own plans to script success in Paris.
The other men’s semifinal Friday is Norway’s Casper Ruud, twice the runner-up in Paris — to Rafael Nadal in 2022 and to Novak Djokovic in 2023 — against Germany’s Alexander Zverev, a finalist at the 2020 U.S. Open, an Olympic gold medalist and into the final four at Roland Garros for the fourth consecutive year.