The moment he was done with his final event at the Goa National Games in November, from where he walked away with eight gold medals and the best male athlete tag, swimmer Srihari Nataraj did not want to go anywhere near a pool.
The 22-year-old from Bengaluru did not for a large part of the next six weeks, the longest time he has spent away from the pool since he took to swimming full-time.
Physically, he was “dead”, the backstroke specialist said. Mentally, “it was a long and tough couple of years” featuring a creditable 2022 Commonwealth Games (he made the 50m and 100m backstroke finals and lowered his 200m backstroke national record) and a below-par Asian Games last year (he rewrote the 200m freestyle national record but finished 6th in 50m and 100m backstroke finals, his favoured events where he had hoped to medal).
The motivation tank and incentives pipeline had been left near-empty too. Srihari — he had also won a bagful of medals in the Gujarat National Games in 2022 — had no real drive going into Goa, for he believed the returns in terms of financial reward did not match the investment. Srihari said he received cash award for the National Games from the state government for only one medal and felt “bummed out” comparing his monetary compensation to swimmers of other states and those of other countries. Add to that the one major event he had earmarked for 2023 (Asian Games) not going as well as expected, and the youngster wasn’t sure what he was swimming for.
“I wanted to stay away from the pool. It just wasn’t fun, swimming for nothing. Because that’s what it feels like most of the time,” Srihari said. “You swim in the nationals, National Games, a lot of international meets, but unless you medal at the CWG, Asian Games, Olympics or the World Championships, as swimmers we don’t make any money. So, there’s no incentive for the whole time; we are expected to work throughout the season for nothing. It was something that was bothering me quite a bit.”
Money isn’t the only motivating factor, he though points out. For an event like the Asian Games, “it is solely to win a medal”. But for an event like the National Games, “where I swim more events than usual, you hope to get a payback,” he said.
“If I’m 16-17, it’s a whole different thing. But now, having given up the other side of life — having a job — for swimming and when you see no rewards from it… incentives do make a big difference.”
His lowered drive for the sport having met a lengthy break after the National Games, Srihari chose to “do nothing” and yet a lot of things not involving swimming: watch movies, play a lot of cricket and the keyboard more regularly than he does.
Back to the pool for training late last month and for the inter-university zonal meet, Srihari feels refreshed and eager to almost start from scratch for the new season. The 2023 one was, he says, “all over the place”.
He was faster in 50m and 100m backstroke at the Asian Games in October (25.39 secs and 54.48 respectively) than at the World Championships in July. But that’s still a bit off his personal best of 25.18 in 50m (2021) and 53.77 in 100m (2021), both current national records. And despite being “surprisingly quite good” in the freestyle events in Hangzhou, he wasn’t satisfied.
“I’ve trained faster than I’ve ever trained. I was ready to race. But sometimes it just doesn’t click on that day.”
He’s looking at tweaking a few technical things with his stroke and finding his rhythm and balance. “I have to keep myself afloat a bit — it is something I noticed in the races, that I was more in the water than on the water,” he said.
Srihari’s “only goal” for 2024 is to qualify for the Paris Olympics. The Olympic Qualifying Time for 100m backstroke is 53.74, which is 0.03s below Srihari’s PB. He had made a late cut for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics by achieving the 100m backstroke ‘A’ standard in a Rome meet that June. Srihari, who plans to take part in three international meets over the next few months, doesn’t want to leave it that late this time.
“Hopefully I don’t take it so close and qualify by March-April,” he said. “I think I should be ready in the next few months. I was thinking the other day, ‘I’ve done it before and there’s no reason why I can’t do it again’.”
And if he does get to Paris, he wants to ensure that he executes things better in a big meet and brings out his best level when it matters most.
“Theoretically, if I swim to the best of my abilities and can pull maybe half a second off my NR over the next six months, I can make the semis (in Paris). That’s the goal, and that’ll be something good for Indian swimming.”