Tuesday 19 May 2009

Virdhawal Khade, Sandeep Sejwal and J. Agnishwar head to Europe


Virdhawal Khade, Sandeep Sejwal and J. Agnishwar along with their coach Nihar Ameen left for Europe last week. They are scheduled to train and compete in the region in lead up to the World Swimming Championships at Rome, Italy in July this year.

The tentative schedule will be as follows:
* Altitude Training, Sierra Nevada, Spain
* Competition: Mare Nostrum, Barcelona, Spain
* Bio-mechanic Analysis, Bordeaux, France
* Competition: French Open Swimming Championships, Paris, France
* LSB Sports and Conference Center , Frankfurt, Germany
* Competition: FINA World Swimming Championships, Rome, Italy

Look out for more updates as the swimmers begin competing.

Swimmers to train in South Africa

(The article appeared in The Hindu on March 1st, 2009, click here)

A 35-member Indian swimming contingent, comprising 20 boys and 15 girls, will leave for South Africa on March 1 to train at the High Performance Training Centre in the University of Pretoria campus.

The squad will be accompanied by three coaches, including the chief National coach S. Pradeep Kumar. The South African training stint will last a month.

The swimmers have been training for the past 50 days at the SAI (South) Centre pool in Kengeri, near here, for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. As many as 78 swimmers were called for the camp, but only 61 reported. Many had to skip the camp due to exams.

Top swimmers, including Virdhawal Khade, Sandeep Sejwal and Rehan Poncha, however, preferred to train at their respective clubs after making a token appearance at the camp.

Beneficial

“It was not compulsory to attend the camp, but those who did have benefited from it,” said Pradeep. “The camp’s focus was mainly on physical conditioning. In South Africa, the swimmers would undergo further evaluation so that we can work on their specific needs before going into stroke correction and speed work,” added Pradeep.

The camp at SAI winds up on Saturday. Though the team had received the green signal, there was some anxiety about timely release of funds for the trip. Pradeep, however, confirmed on Friday that this has been made and the team is all set to leave as scheduled.

The team:

Boys: K. Rajeev, Anoop Augustine, Praveen Tokas, Rushab Pawar, Aditya Sangvekar, Sourabh Sangvekar, Akash Rohit, Aditya Roshan, Sibnath, Sumanthanath, Pulkit Kumar, Sunil, Diwakar, Gopinath Kayal, Mandar Divase, J.P. Arjun, Rahul Choksi, Anshul Kothari, Rohit Kumar and Anjani Kumar.

Girls: Pooja Alva, Shubha, Kshipra Mahajan, Richa Mishra, Amreen Mallik, Fariha Zaman, Talasha Prabhu, Pratima Kollali, Sreelaksmi Gorut, Shilpa Naifu, Vandita Dharial, Sneha, Bhoomi Motwani, Aditi Malavika and Gulnaz Rawoof.

Coaches: Pradeep Kumar, Satish Suri and Biswajith Dey Chowdhury.