‘It was very emotional’: Swimmer Shristi Upadhaya after winning gold in National Championships

Swimmers from the Odisha IIS Swimming High Performance Centre in Bhubaneshwar earned their first Gold medal of the meet on the third day of the 77th Senior National Aquatic Championships 2024, being held in Mangaluru. Pratyasa Ray, Mannata Mishra, Shristi Upadhaya, and Sonia Patel swam their hearts out to post 4:27.90 and edged out Maharashtra , who finished at 4:28.18 in the 4 x 100m Medley relay.

While Odisha led the race in Backstroke, Breaststroke and Butterfly, Maharashtra clawed their way back in the last 100m of Freestyle to force a photo finish. Shristi Upadhaya, a 22-year-old who has been training at JSW IIS Odisha satellite centre said, “It was so close in the last lap. We had a four second lead, but then the Maharashtra team caught up and our heartbeats shot up in anticipation. We literally just closed our eyes, praying that Sonia touches the pads first. It was very emotional to finally achieve something we had worked for over 2 years.”

The Odisha IIS Swimming High Performance Centre in Odisha aims to develop a robust culture for swimming and produce world-class swimmers from the state. In addition to highly rated coaches, the team includes a Sports Science staff to ensure well rounded development of their athletes.

Shrishti used to train in West Bengal before she shifted back to her home state in 2022 to further her growth as a swimmer at the Odisha IIS Swimming High Performance Centre, “There is a huge difference in terms of the infrastructure, the additional coaches for strength and conditioning, physios. I get everything I could possibly need here including nutritionists, psychologists, it’s all taken care of.”

Sandeep Sejwal, an Olympian in 2008, Asian Games medalist in 2014 and National Champion for 15 years in a row is the Head Coach for the Odisha IIS Swimming High Performance Centre. He works alongside Technical Director Douglas Eager, who boasts over 40+ years of experience in coaching, to help develop the swimmers under their care.

“We've been preparing for this event for almost two and a half years now. We've been looking forward to this kind of results since then, it might have come as a surprise to other teams, but for us, it was exactly what we planned for and exactly what we worked for,” Sandeep revealed.

He further added, “ Odisha IIS Swimming High Performance Centre is an indoor facility where we could train in all weather. It was a plus point for us that the weather could not interrupt our training. But I think our biggest plus point was that all four girls trained together all the time. They knew each other very well and nobody wanted to let anybody else down. So, it was one swimmer giving their best for the rest of the team.”