Para swimmer Jiya Rai wins prestigious WOWSA Award-2024

At 16 years of age, Jiya Rai, on the 28th of July last year, swam 34 kms to cross the English Channel in 17 hrs 25 min.

This was a feat worthy of appreciation by any standards. But the fact that she was the first girl with Autism Spectrum Disorder to accomplish the feat in a 150 years of Channel swimming history made the world stand up and take note last year.

And now, Rai has been bestowed with the number one spot in the ‘Adaptive Performance of the Year’ category at the World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) Awards -2024. 

The WOWSA Awards

At San Francisco, California on Monday, Jiya Rai was announced as the recipient of the award.

Instituted in 2008, the WOWSA Award is incidentally the highest award in the world for open water swimming and recognizes the courage and endurance of global open water swimmers across six categories.

This time around, a total of 177 candidates were nominated which was evaluated by a 83-member WOWSA Awards Voting Academy and Advisory Board.

The final winners emerged via a combination of Academy votes and over 6000 public votes.

Who is Jiya Rai

The teenager is the daughter of Madan Rai, MC-at-Arms II, serving with the Indian Navy at Mumbai.

Rai was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, a neurological and developmental condition, which affects the manner in which people learn, communicate and interact with each other.

Jiya first shot to national fame on February 18, 2021 when she was mentioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his ‘Mann Ki Baat’ episode.

But even before that she had emerged as a open water swimming prodigy having entered the Asia Book of Records and India Book of Records.

In December 2022, she was a part of a six-member relay team that swam 1,100 kms from Mumbai to Goa and back over a 11 day period. She was the only woman and the youngest member of that team.

And in July last year, kicked off the Abbot’s Cliff in England and swam across to Pointe de la Courte-Dune in France, covering a distance of 34 kms to become the world’s fastest and the youngest para swimmer to cross the English Channel.