BENGALURU: Before the 10th Asian Age Group Swimming Championship even began, eyes were on ace swimmer Virdhawal Khade. Having already secured the ‘B’ cut for Tokyo 2020 Olympics, at his home-pool, he was expected to get the elusive ‘A’ cut in the 50-metre freestyle event.
However, on Wednesday, Khade cut a disappointed face at the Padukone Dravid Centre for Sports Excellence pool. Khade’s 22.59 seconds-timing in the final of 50m freestyle on the Day 2 of the event was enough to fetch him his second gold medal of the event but he failed to get the ‘A’ cut (22.01s) and even the personal best.
Since clocking 22.43s at the Asian Games last year, Khade hasn’t been able to better his timing. He had a poor run in the World Championships. While he was still recovering from an injury, Khade got the ‘B’ mark in the senior nationals earlier this month, clocking 22.44s but it was still 0.4 second off the ‘A’ cut.
"I’m very disappointed. I think I should have done way better today (Wednesday). I got too excited and tried to power through. In the 50m, when you try too hard, the technique goes wrong. I think the first 20m was good. I got the start I had trained for but I faltered after that. I just tried to put all of my strength into every stroke and my timing and technique went off. I got a brilliant start I feel. Usually, I pull off after the 25m-mark but it just didn’t happen," said Khade.
The Maharashtra-born swimmer is however confident of getting the job done. While he still has time until June next year, he will have another shot in a month when he competes at the FINA World Cup in Budapest. The target is to get the mark by the end of the year. "I am hoping to at least close the gap to the ‘A’ cut by 0.2 or 0.3s. It’s not difficult. I did 0.2 slower than my best time and if you can do slower, you can definitely go faster on a good day. In my mind, I haven’t qualified for the Olympics as ‘B’ cut is irrelevant. And I want that as soon as I can as I don’t want my ultimate goal to be just limited to qualifying for the Olympics. I want to improve my performance there," said Khade.
Not focussing on 100 metre
If that was the case for the 50m event, Khade is not hopeful of the ‘A’ in the 100m freestyle. In the individual 100m sprint, he last raced in March. Plagued by injury and nearing the twilight of his career, Khade will be concentrating only on the shorter format. “I’ve trained for 100m, keeping in mind the last part of the race (50m). I can’t focus on both 50 and 1000m. The training is completely different in both and with age, it will be difficult to manage both,” he said.
On Thursday, however, Khade will compete in the 100m event and for the first time against his teammate Srihari Nataraj.