Swimming
Olympics 2024 Swimming: Srihari Nataraj, Dhinidhi Desinghu exit in heats
With the two swimmers' exits, the Indian challenge in swimming at the Paris Olympics came to an end.
Swimmer Dhinidhi Desinghu's debut at the Olympic Games ended in the heats.
Indian swimmers Dhinidhi Desinghu and Srihari Nataraj exited the Paris Olympics 2024 after failing to progress beyond their heats of the women's 200m freestyle and men's 100m backstroke events respectively, on Sunday.
With their exits, the Indian challenge in swimming at Paris 2024 came to an end.
With the top 16 swimmers set to qualify for the semifinals, Srihari clocked 55.01 seconds to finish second in his heats. But, his timing was only the 33rd best out of the 46 competitors who swam in the event.
Srihari had finished 27th in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Great Britain swimmer Jonny Marshal clocked 53.93s and grabbed the 16th and final semifinal spot.
Meanwhile, 14-year-old Dhinidhi Desinghu, the youngest Indian Olympian to make her debut at Paris 2024, fared very well and finished first in her heats, clocking 2:06.96s.
But, it was not enough to get her into the top 16, landing her in the 23rd spot in a field of 30 swimmers.
Mollie O'Callaghan of Australia clocked the best timing in women's 200m freestyle, finishing with 1:55.79s and Rebecca-Aimee Diaconescu of Romania was the last woman to make the semi-final cut-off with a time of 1:59.29s.
The two Indian swimmers qualified for the Paris Olympics trough Universality quota.
