Srihari Nataraj and Maana Patel failed to better their personal bests on Sunday. Both crashed out of the 100m backstroke events at the Tokyo Olympics.
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The Indian swimming team had only 3 participants at the Tokyo Olympics – Maana Patel, Srihari Nataraj, and Sajan Prakash. Srihari and Maana were set to participate in the 100m backstroke events. Maana became the first Indian female swimmer ever to qualify for the Olympics. However, Maana Patel failed to beat her personal best in her maiden Olympics, finishing second in the women’s 100m backstroke heats.
The 21-year-old trailed Donata Katai from the start and finished the race at 1:05.20. She was almost 3 seconds behind the Zimbabwe swimmer. The third swimmer in the heat was Granada’s Kimberly Ince clocking 1:10.24. The timing meant she finished 39th in the heats and failed to qualify for the semi-finals tomorrow. Only the top 16 athletes with the best timing across all heats progress.
Maana had qualified for the Tokyo Olympics through the Universality quota after failing to achieve the ‘A’ cut. She did not qualify for any of the other events and this ends her participation in this edition of the Games.
Srihari Nataraj followed Maana Patel in failing to better his personal best and crashed out of the 100m backstroke event at the Tokyo Olympics. The 20-year-old clocked 54.31s, 0.64s slower than his personal best (53.77s). He had set that National Record back in June to secure direct entry for the Tokyo Olympics. He became just the second Indian to achieve that feat after Sajan Prakash.
The Karnataka lad started well, completing the first 50m in 26.18s but could not sustain the momentum in the second half of the race. He ended up 5th in Heat 3 and 27th overall. Only the top 16 swimmers qualify for the semifinals, thereby ruling out his progress. Srihari qualified only for a single event and his participation at Tokyo Olympics also ends with this elimination.
