CHENNAI: At the junior national aquatics championships taking place in 2019, a young boy from Tirunelveli hoped to make a splash as in butterfly. However, that attempt went in vain as he finished eighth in the 100m final. After that moment, he went up to his mother, who was in the stands, sullen and in despair. The mother insisted that he gave himself another chance. "If you don't improve, you can call quit," was what his mother told him. The teen gave himself another chance, and in the National School Games in November the same year, he won gold and was on an upward trajectory. From almost quitting to a national record, has been his journey.
On Sunday, the then teen, now 21, broke the national record (NR) in the men's 100m butterfly with a timing of 52.57s. This is Benedicton Rohit, Tamil Nadu's latest record man in the pool. It can be said that Kavitha Sheebarani's advice on not giving yourself up and trusting one's ability coupled with hard work has quite an impact on his son.
Rohit has had a not-too-memorable time in the pool. Beginning his journey in 2009 as a backstroker, he tried his hand in all styles(backstroke, breastroke, butterfly, and freestyle), but couldn't find any suitable to him. Post the win in 2019 in the fly event, he switched back to breaststroke, before making a 'comeback' in the 2021 Khelo India University Games. Training under coach Nihar Ameen of the Dolphins Academy in Bengaluru, Rohit switched to the 100m. "Nihar sir liked my technique and helped me improve it," he told this daily.
He described his record-breaking swim on Sunday: "I set a target of 53.1 seconds. But to have clocked 52.5s was a surprise for me." He said the coach had always wanted him to swim below 53s but Rohit found it a bit difficult. The record was previously held by Olympian Sajan Prakash.
Rohit is not sure if his foray into all styles (strokes) helped him but it did give him an opportunity to find the style in which he could improve. "I had to go through all the styles and then choose what's best for me. Initially I didn't have anyone to guide me in choosing my preferred style," he said. He felt that this would help him realise his dream of representing India in the 2028 LA Olympics.
Yadesh joins party
A misplaced player ID card cost Tamil Nadu swimmer M S Yadesh Babu's chance of a senior medal at the National Aquatics Championships in Hyderabad in July, 2023. Yadesh wanted to make amends. This came after a disappointing 2022 when he failed to qualify for the nationals even.
Cut to June this year, the 21-year old stepped on top of the podium with a gold medal, after winning the men's 50m breaststroke final in this edition of the national championships with a timing of 28.35s. “In this event, it is all about sprinting 50m. I trusted the process and thought of what I did in the training,” he said.
Yadesh first burst onto the scene in 2021 when he broke the junior national mark in the 50m breaststroke in Bengaluru. But his career picked up towards the end of 2023, when he trained much harder and with discipline. “I stopped going out with friends and to family functions. I found my happiness in the gym and the pool,” he said. Another positive was his consistency. “Before this, I would never follow diet properly and would not attend swimming classes properly. But after cutting out on these, I started to train regularly,” he said. His training sessions in the off-season featured 8km swims, where an endurance drill would be given for a certain distance. “Earlier, it was just warming up for the first two kilometres and repeating the same technique which became redundant. Now, it is more of resistance training with full intensity. This brought out the competitive nature in me,” he said. He is training under SDAT-Dolphins head coach K T Muraleedharan in Chennai. Yadesh will be participating in the FISU World University in Germany next month.