How Sajan Prakash overcame injuries, uncertainty to script history
The 27-year-old was forced out of the pool for five months, but became the first Indian swimmer to qualify for the Olympics with a A cut
Sajan Prakash admits welling up when he saw the timing 1:56.38 flash against his name during the heats at Sette Colli tournament in Rome in June. The 27-year-old had gone from five months out of the pool and dealing with injuries to become the first Indian to make the A qualifying mark for the Olympics.
“I instantly felt relieved. I felt lighter on my shoulders. I had come a long way, braved many struggles to achieve this mark,” Sajan told Quint after securing a spot for Tokyo 2020 in 200m butterfly event.
The Kerala-born swimmer had picked up a shoulder injury in December 2019, right after the SAF Games. When things did start looking up and he went to Thailand on FINA (International Swimming Federation) scholarship in February 2020. But the Coronavirus outbreak sent the world into lockdown and Prakash was stranded in a foreign land for more than five months.
“During the (shoulder) injury phase, I’d see others swimming and realise I can’t do it, it’s frustrating,” Prakash had told Olympics.com. “It’s devastating to stand outside and watch others swim. But I was in a positive zone, my coach and friends kept me going.
“When I was stuck in Thailand during Covid, I was staying at a hostel,” he added.
“The coach would come every morning and conduct drills in the morning and evening. It was a two-storey building, sometimes we’d be running up and down the stairs, sometimes we exercised in the room. That’s because we weren’t allowed to step out of the hostel.”
After five months Prakash was able to leave the country and went to Dubai to train with his former coach Pradeep Kumar. Known as a taskmaster, Kumar put Prakash through the paces and gave him shelter in his home. It still took Prakash almost three months after getting back in the pool to complete one butterfly stroke fluently.
“At that time, I’d say I was 50-50 on whether I could qualify for the Olympics,” said Prakash, who went to the Rio Games in 2016 on a Universality quota. “There were doubts if I could recover before that, but at some point I knew I could do it. My coach helped me achieve the target.”
Prakash also picked up a neck injury just before the Latvia Open this March. But a massage from a masseuse with the Belarus team helped ease his neck pain and Prakash clocked 1:59.31 in 200m butterfly. Not as good as his coach expected, but it was the first time in two years that he had gone under two minutes.
At the Belgrade Trophy in June, Prakash closed the gap and swam the 200m butterfly in 1:56.96. But he was still short of the A qualifying cut of 1:56.48.
“I began watching his video over and over, and even consulted with some of my former swimmers like (Olympian) Rehan Poncha,” Kumar told Quint. “To make the cut, we realised he had to go faster by 1 cm per stroke and we did speed workouts.”
Those proved decisive in Prakash shaving off those micro-seconds. Only a week later, in Rome, he swam to history.
When can Sajan Prakash be seen in action?
Sajan Prakash will compete in the 200m butterfly heats at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre on Monday, July 26.