PANAJI
At the recently held 68th National School Games in Rajkot, Gujarat, Goa’s Aarohi Nilesh Borde won two medals in swimming “ a gold and a silver “ in the 200m butterfly and 100m butterfly respectively. These were the only medals that Goa won during the Games.
The Panaji girl began her swimming journey as a toddler when she was just two and a half years old.
“At first, they did not allow me to swim as I was too small. I got into professional swimming at the age of four under the guidance of Afra Ma’am. Later, as I grew older, I started training under Jerry Sir and Patil Sir. I just liked the feel of water and fell in love with the sport when I was inside the pool,” says Aarohi.
During her early days, young Aarohi used to accompany her elder sister Niranjani to the Campal swimming pool. Niranjani, who is three years older than Aarohi, is also a state-level swimmer.
Aarohi’s training schedule is quite rigorous. “I train for about six hours a day, from 5:00 AM till 7:30 AM in the morning at Mapusa and from 4:00 PM till 7:30 PM in the evening at Campal daily. Sunday is a holiday, while Wednesday is a half-day for us,” says the teenager.
The 13-year-old girl, a class 8 student of Sharda Mandir High School, Miramar, Panaji, has been dominating the swimming scene in Goa for the last few years, having won the state individual championship six times. She has even won the toddler championship (for children up to the age of 5) three times.
But despite participating at the national level since 2021, either in the sub-junior or junior category, i.e. at Bangalore 2021, Rajkot 2022, and Bhubaneswar 2023 & 2024, a national medal had always eluded Aarohi despite her best efforts. She always finished in the top 10 in her category in either the butterfly or freestyle events but could not finish in the top 3.
Finally, Aarohi tasted her first success at the national level at the recently held National School Games in Rajkot, where she won gold and silver in the 200m butterfly and 100m butterfly respectively.
The turning point in Aarohi’s career came in 2022 when she was inducted into the Khelo India Centre for Excellence at the Campal swimming pool. That’s when she met her new coach, T A Sujith, an international-level swimmer who was also India’s fastest swimmer from 1998 to 2008 and someone who has vast experience in coaching national-level swimmers.
“Sujith Sir has done wonders for me. He comes up with new workouts each time and has helped me a lot to improve upon my technique and timings. Had he not been there, my timings would never have improved so much,” says Aarohi.
“Before I met Sujith Sir, I used to swim the 200m butterfly in over 3 minutes, the 100m butterfly in 1 minute 30 seconds, and the 50m butterfly in 40 seconds, which was really bad. Now, my best timings are 2 minutes 35 seconds in the 200m butterfly, 1 minute 10 seconds in the 100m butterfly, and 32.27 seconds in the 50m butterfly. So, you can see that there has been a lot of improvement.”
But these timings won’t be good enough if Aarohi is to win a medal at the junior nationals next year, and she is aware of this fact.
Aarohi will have to clock 2 minutes 30 seconds in the 200m butterfly, 1 minute 07 seconds in the 100m butterfly, and below 31 seconds in the 50m butterfly to be a medal contender at the junior nationals.
“My next aim is to win a medal at the junior nationals next year, and I am working hard in order to achieve my goal,” says Aarohi.
With the ability to work hard and with the guidance and support of her coach Sujith, Aarohi believes her goal is very much achievable.
It is not just swimming that keeps Aarohi busy. She has also won prizes in monologue and drama competitions. She even plays the basic harmonium and also trains in Indian Classical Music with her mother Sumedha Desai, who is an internationally acclaimed Indian classical singer.
