Sajan Prakash A has become the first Indian swimmer to cross the Olympic qualification time. He clocked 1:56.38sec within the men’s 200m butterfly at the Sette Colli Trophy in Rome. Sajan, who played within the 2016 Rio Olympics, managed to enter the Tokyo Olympics ‘A Standard’ by 0.1 seconds. Tokyo Olympics a customary is one minute 56.48 seconds. The Kerala swimmer clocked 1:56.96sec, which was his national record, within the Belgrade Trophy swimming competition last week.
Prakash will compete with Mana Patel within thematch of the Tokyo Olympics. Mana has been nominated by the Swimming Federation of India. Prakash’s direct qualifying implies that Srihari Nataraja won't be ready to participate within the Tokyo Olympics, who was nominated under the university quota together with Mana. Natraj omitted on qualifying within 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 chance to play the Olympics provided nobody has qualified directly or isn't invited by FINA on the idea 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 skipped over on the ‘A’ qualification level of the Tokyo Games. Prakash had won the palmwithin the men’s 200m butterfly event with a timing of 1:56.96sec within the Olympic qualifiers recognized by the world swimming body FINA. During this, he had improved his own national record of 1 minute 57.73 seconds set in 2018. The 27-year-old Kerala swimmer, however, disregarded on the Olympic ‘A’ qualification level by a margin of 0.48 seconds. Natraj, on the opposite hand, won the trophywithin the 100m backstroke event with a timing of 54.45 seconds.
