THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As Nepal’s teenage swimming sensation Sirish Gurung takes to the pool at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday evening, a youngster in Kerala will have his eyes glued to the television set to watch his buddy make it to the biggest stage of world sports.
Rohan Mammen Roy, a native of Thiruvananthapuram, was a classmate of 17-year-old Sirish at the Kendriya Vidyalaya, run by Embassy of India in Kathmandu, for three years from the ninth grade and hopes the ‘teenage wonder’ will do his alma mater proud with his efforts in the pool.
“Sirish is a really lovable guy who is really passionate about sports and plays a variety of musical instruments like piano and drums. Apart from swimming, he used to participate in cycling, athletics and football matches at school and was a motor sports fan,” Rohan reminisced.
Talking about his schoolmate, Rohan, who has come up against Sirish in inter-house football, feels he is a fighter. “Sirish had an urge to better his own records time and again. He is passionate at everything he does and competes against himself,” he said adding that the swimmer has 14 national records to his credit.
Rohan recalls an incident which sums up Sirish’s fighting spirit. “He was not good at Hindi. But when the time came to choose our second language, he selected Hindi hoping it will help him improve his language skill,” he added.
Rohan said he had been in touch with Sirish on Facebook after hearing the news of him qualifying for the Olympic Games. “I congratulated him after he got qualified for the Olympics which was always his dream,” he said.
“As classmates, we used to visit his house almost every week. There we used to jam in a room he set up for music. When I contacted him recently, Sirish invited me to visit Nepal,” said Rohan, who is now a student at Kerala Law Academy.
Sirish will compete in the heat 2 of men’s 100m freestyle swimming starting 9.35 PM on Tuesday. He will be competing against swimmers from Cambodia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malta for a place in the semifinals.