Did Srihari Nataraj do the right thing moving away from 100m Backstroke?
Srihari Nataraj, who set National Records three times in the recently concluded FISU World University Games 2025 in Berlin, is worthy of high praise. But that does not stop one from wondering if the 24-year-old erred in skipping his best event, the 100m Backstroke, to focus on the 200m Freestyle .
It is not as of one has a closed mind to an athlete choosing to pursue different events. When we saw distance runner Ankita Dhyani win silver in the women’s 3000m Steeplechase in the World University Games, we knew that such shifts made after careful planning and with specific goals in mind, tend to have a good chance of savouring the taste of success.
A couple of years ago, Tejaswin Shankar made a conscious decision to shift from High Jump in which he holds the National Record (2.29m) since April 2018, to Decathlon. The switched may have happened on a whim but he studied the landscape in the continent and made the most of his training in Kansas State University.
Having won the Commonwealth Games 2022 Birmingham High Jump bronze medal, he has added Decathlon silver medals from Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games and the Gumi 2025 Asian Athletics Championships besides the multi-event bronze medal in the Bangkok 2023 Asian Championships.
David Eagleman writes about the decision-making process in his book, The Brian. “Sometimes you decide selfishly, sometimes generously, sometimes impulsively, and sometimes with the long view in mind. We are complex creatures because we are composed of many drives, all of which want to be in control,” he says.
Having allowed that insight to sink in, let us get down to studying Srihari Nataraj’s case, but only after the disclaimer that more often than not the athlete knows what is best for him or her. And that the athlete’s goal-setting abilities are usually determined by the environment in which he or she has grown up training as well as the influences that he or she has been open to.
The FISU World University Games in Berlin saw him pick the 200m Freestyle as the event in which he had the best chance of making a mark. It is to his credit that he set the National Record at 1:48.22 in the heats and then at 1:48.11 in the semifinals where he was ranked ninth, one rung short of making it to the final.
He also made it to the semifinals of the 100m Freestyle, with a new National Record of 49.46 seconds in the heats and the semifinals of the 50m Backstroke. He was ranked 15th and 11th respectively in these semifinals, clocking 49.56 and 25.39 seconds. And in the 50m Freestyle, he did not qualify for the semifinals with a time of 23.06 seconds in the heats.
Would his personal best times have taken him in further in any of the events? He clocked his best in the 200m Freestyle but could not book a place in the final. His personal best times of 22.91 seconds in 50m Freestyle would have got him to the final and 25.18 in the 50m Backstroke would have pitchforked him to the medal race.
Falling back on imagination because he chose not to compete the longer Backstroke events, the only the final he would have qualified for was the 100m Backstroke had he competed and clocked his personal best time in Berlin. The slowest of the eight qualifiers for the final had a time of 54.57. Srihari Nataraj’s personal best stands at 53.77.
Even if it can be argued that it was a time trial at the Sette Colli International in Rome on June 27, 2021, and that he has dipped in under 54 seconds only twice in his career, it must be remembered that he clocked 54.31 in the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games on July 30, 2022, and 54.48 in the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games on September 24, 2023.
Why would Srihari Nataraj not focus on the 100m Backstroke, an event that led him to become a double Olympian, and earned him a seventh place finish in the 2022 Commonwealth Games and a sixth place in the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou? Should he not be training to get better and possibly win a 100m Backstroke medal in Aichi-Nagoya?
There is an impression that being India’s best seems to suffice for him – he owns four National Records. At 24 years of age and being at the peak of his swimming career, he will the primary decision maker when it comes to choosing events to compete in. Or has he been looking at the 200m Freestyle as offering him the best crack at an Asian Games podium next year?
Be that as it may, the PB-BIP (personal best and best Indian performances) culture that pervades across coaches and parents – and hence across swimmers – has restricted Indian swimming. It needs a change in mindset. With FINA handing out universality places, India has seen more Olympians than even Asian Games medalists.
Hopefully there is a generation of swimmers waiting in the wings, wanting to rewrite the script, fired to lead India’s swim revolution with loftier goals. But until that happens, it can only be hoped that Srihari Nataraj will reflect and make the best decisions when picking events to compete in the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games.
Indian swimming needs a breakthrough, and Srihari Nataraj has the best chance of achieving that. The question is: Does he have the right people around him who can guide him in this direction. However, the larger question is: does he know that himself and is prepared to work to realise what he is made for?
