Indian swimmer Sajan Prakash has been to hell and back at the Asian Games, competing in Jakarta while family members went missing in severe flooding.
The 24-year-old became the first swimmer to reach last weekend’s 200m butterfly final, despite the knowledge that five relatives had not been found and his family home in Kerala had been destroyed by floodwater.
Prakash finished in fifth, but his prayers were answered after an uncle called to tell him that his family had survived devastating floods that have killed more than 350 people.
Photo: AFP
“I had trouble sleeping, thinking about my family,” Prakash said. “I hadn’t heard from them because they were cut off ... and not able to contact us.”
Prakash’s mother, Shantymol, who is based in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu, initially kept news of the disaster from her son so he could concentrate on his performances.
However, he found out about the floods from friends and had to put his anxiety to one side, despite hearing no word from Kerala for three days.
“I knew that the rain was getting worse when I arrived in Jakarta, but I didn’t know it was this bad,” Prakash said after yesterday’s 100m fly heats. “But that’s what we train for — to swim under pressure. If I think about it, I will screw up here, and if I screw up here, both are screwed. Either way I can’t help, I just have to focus on what I have to do.”
After becoming the first Indian swimmer to reach an Asian Games final in more than 30 years, Prakash clocked a national record of 1 minute, 57.75 seconds — a distant 3.22 seconds behind Japanese winner Daiya Seto.
Prakash, who swam for India at the 2016 Rio Olympics, said he never thought of quitting.
“I prepared for this for a long time and I didn’t want to screw it up by leaving,” he said. “My teammates kept me entertained and focused — being with them is different from being alone.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier