State women swimmers make a freestyle splash

Jyotsna Pansare has led the charge,bagging two individual gold medals. The 17-year-old Mumbai girl won gold in the 50m backstroke and the 50m butterfly events. Pansare said that it was a very satisfying feeling to win medals in her home state,and the vocal supporters have added to her happiness. “Last year’s nationals weren’t really great for our swimmers. We weren’t winning too many medals but this year we have ensured that almost every event has a medallist from Maharashtra,” she says.

Arti Ghorpade,Pune’s sole representative,has won a bronze medal in the 200m freestyle event to add to her silver medal in the 200m backstroke. Ghorpade,who trains in Bangalore under Nihar Ameen,says that making a mark at the nationals was always her plan. “These are my first senior nationals and I wanted to win a medal. The level of competition is really high but once I had clocked a good timing in my heat,I was confident of winning a medal,” she says.

The Maharashtra women’s relay team also won two gold medals. The first gold came in the 4x100m medley while the second came in the 4x200m freestyle. The girls from Maharashtra also managed to break the national record in both events. The 4x200m national record of 9.01.27 had stood for nine years. The Maharashtra team,in a barnstorming effort,clocked 8:53.84s,smashing the record by seven seconds.

All the members of the Maharashtra relay team train separately. While three of the girls are from Mumbai,Ghorpade is from Pune. However,they say that once they are in the team everything seems to fall in place almost magically. “I don’t think any of us can explain how we manage to win. There is no long-term strategy in place. We just push each other to swim as fast as possible. Maybe that’s the secret,” says Dhumatkar.

Ghorpade sheds more light on the secret of the girls’ success. “Before today’s 4x200m relay,we sat down and discussed our options. We concentrated on building a lead right at the start and for that we decided that the freshest swimmer would start off. We even juggled the order in the middle; I went in at third position just to consolidate the lead with a fast 200m sprint,” she says.

Ghorpade adds that the state aquatic meet,which happened at the beginning of September,had given the group a chance to observe each other’s swimming techniques and advantages from close quarters. “That meet helped us in rotating our positions so as to get the best results and these two gold medals are its rewards,” she says.

Maharashtra State Amateur Aquatics Association (MSAAA) secretary Kishor Vaidya says that the girls’ performance in the senior nationals was on expected lines. “At the last nationals,these girls were overawed by the occasion and were also lacking focussed training. Now all of them have settled in and the results are proof of that.” said Vaidya. He expects the girls to win more medals over the remaining two days of the event. “These girls are among the most talented we have ever had. They are peaking at the right time and we are expecting bigger things from them.” he says.