Thursday, April 23, 2015

Girl who conquers the seas

In India, Cricket is the only sport which has huge fan following and will be in headlines. Rest of the sports are never taken in to account.  One such underachievement was the youngest to swim in the Antarctic waters. It belongs to Bhakthi Sharma, a girl who conquers the oceans. She started swimming at the age of two and half where kids can barely walk. She was born in Mumbai and brought up in Udaipur. Her mother is a national-level swimmer. She trains Bhakthi from a very young age.

It was not a fairy tale for her that she cannot train for long hours due to lack of good swimming pools, and as she started growing up, there were a lot of social limits of being a girl swimmer. She quit swimming for some time and trained karate in the pursuit of black belt. However, that didn't last long, thanks to her couch who have to leave for his hometown. She was confused to take which sports where her mother advises to doing anything with 100% effort.

Bhakthi started swimming again, and it was no looking back since. She went on to compete state and national-level championships. She was also excellent in her studies scoring more than 80% in class 10th and 12th. She was often considered as an underdog due to her age comparison with other competitors. But, she proves age is just a number that we can achieve anything if we work hard and passionate about the sport we love.

At the age of fourteen, she began swimming in the open waters. There was a sea swim between Uran port to Gateway of India. Her mother told her that it would be best for her to start on this. She trained during the winter at a temperature of 5 - 6 degrees. She thanks the authorities at the pool who allows her to train alone with her mom. At each time, she pushes her extra for a little more. She began to swim for 3 to 4 hours continuously, which helps her in long swim.

Bhakthi tastes the success in open water swimming. At present, she was the youngest swimmer in the world and first swimmer from Asia to swim in all four oceans (India, Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic). In January 2015, she became the first Asian girl to swim in freezing water of Antarctica. She crosses 2.4 kms at a temperature of 1 degree breaking the record of Lynne Cox (USA) and Lewis Pugh (Britain). She was awarded Tenzing Norgery from the president for her swimming achievements.

I’m voting for Bhakthi Sharma’s #WillOfSteel and blogging on BlogAdda to help him/her get felicitated and eventually enabled by JSW. 

2 comments:

  1. Grr... what a coincidence... Infact I have voted for Bakti Sharma and written about her victory.. Indeed, I said the same point... Sports means Cricket :)
    well, Great people think alike :P lol

    Here is my post - Please do read and share your thoughts :)

    http://deepikamuthusamy.blogspot.in/2015/04/will-of-steel-bhakti-sharma.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My late grandfather taught me swimming. Whenever I swim, I used to think about him. Now, I will also keep Bakti in my mind. I will try to imitate her swimming style.

      Yeah, great people will think alike. Whether we ?

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