CHENNAI: As the Annual General body meeting of the Swimming Federation of India (SFI) was conducted in Chennai on Sunday, the federation’s president RN Jayaprakash and general secretary Monal D Choksi were re-elected for their respective positions. While Sudesh Nagvenkar of Goa was elected as the treasurer, five vice presidents — Rajkumar, Anil Vyas, M Satish Kumar, Bhaskar Das and Anil Khatri — and three joint secretaries — TS Muraleedharan, M Lokeshwar Singh, Lakshmi Chandra Mahakur — too, were elected. Virendra Nanavati will act as the advisor to the president and also will look after the SFI administration.
Speaking after retaining the top position, Jayaprakash said that despite Covid-19 putting them on the back foot in their first term, they are keen to build on the work done in the last four years.
The key focus areas, he said, are increasing the number of registered swimmers by 5000-10,000 each year with the help of camps and coaching clinics, special focus on water polo and diving targetting the youth and the swimmers at the state level, improving the number of competitive coaches.
Jayaprakash said that the SFI is going to propose to four states — Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Odisha, and Telangana — to hand over the swimming pools to the federation for a year-long camp so that they will be able to bring in foreign coaches. “In the Velachery swimming pool, we have a diving pool, a lovely gym, etc. If you have to build a pool like that level it will cost `1000 crore. If it is handed over to SFI along with SDAT, we both would combine together and do a very good academy there. We are going to propose it to four states,” said Jayaprakash.
With the elite swimmers currently competing at the Mare Nostrum Swim Tour in Monaco, Choksi said that they have earmarked the upcoming events for them in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics.