Virdhawal Khade is done as a swimmer. Not quite with swimming though.
Among India’s most decorated swimmers and the 2010 Asian Games bronze medallist has dived right into coaching after “hanging up my trunks” — as he put it in his social media post on Thursday — in a swimming career that lasted over two decades. And so, as Khade posted his announcement in the morning, he was back in the pool of Khar Gymkhana in the evening overseeing a bunch of kids.
“Over the past few years, I knew that I wanted to do this (coaching). I guess this was my calling,” Khade said. “As a kid, I always wanted to win an Olympic medal. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do it as a swimmer, so now I get a chance to hopefully do it as a coach in the future.”
His first project will be based in Mumbai, coaching the team at Khar Gymkhana where he has been training since 2015. Khade has about 30 swimmers to work with, from age groups of 8-9 to 23-24 including six who have competed in the senior Nationals. “I have a good team here with three other coaches. Hopefully with my knowledge and experience, I’ll help these swimmers achieve some good things,” Khade said.
That knowledge and experience has cut across decades. The teen qualified for the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the youngest ever Indian swimmer, became the first Indian to win an Asian Games medal (50m butterfly) in 24 years in 2010 and signed off with a freestyle gold at last year’s National Games in Goa at 32. Over all those years, the multiple national record holder has trained at different places within the country and been on international exposure stints. He has witnessed the difference in infrastructure and in science and technology from an Indian and a global lens. For him from a coaching perspective though, the majority of work must happen in the water.
“All of that counts for little if you don’t work hard in the pool. A lot of us have started looking for solutions outside the pool. Somebody wants to work hard in the gym, bring in a nutritionist, good physio support. Sure, all that is important, but it won’t do a thing if you aren’t working hard enough in the pool,” he said.
“And so once I’m happy with the effort that I’m seeing in the water, I’m going to start adding a little more science to it all.”
For Khade, the right age to pick and groom specialised swimming talent in India is between age 12-14. Foreign exposure can’t be everyone’s cup of tea, he said. “I wouldn’t want to copy-paste the things that I went through with everyone,” he added.
What he will bring in as coach with everyone is a hands-on, no-nonsense approach. The first step towards bridging the gap between swimmers in India and the other top countries starts from developing a belief that they can belong at that level.
“Sitting here, we can know what sort of routines and workouts the American and Australians are doing. The data and numbers are easily accessible to anyone in the world. But first, the coaches need to believe it can happen. If a young swimmer is doing one minute in 100 freestyle, the swimmer, the coach and the parents need to believe he can get down to 50 seconds.
“Today’s youth is slightly delicate when it comes to dealing with pressure. We need to get them acquainted with handling that from a young age. They really need to want it,” Khade said.
It starts with Khade himself, which is why he has quit his state government job to commit himself fully to coaching. His first goal is to get Maharashtra back up again in the country’s swimming scene — “for that, we need more volume of swimmers in clubs” — and down the line, take his coaching journey beyond one city and a club.
“When I get to a point where I feel I have enough experience and confidence to do something bigger and grander, I definitely would want to do that,” he said. “Coaching is a lot of trial and error. I will need to find the right philosophy.”