History made! Swimmer Sajan Prakash becomes first Indian to make 'A' cut qualification for Olympics

Sajan Prakash creates history as the first-ever Indian to breach the automatic qualifying mark for the Olympics. Prakash qualifies for Tokyo Olympics after he clocked 1:56.38 to earn the 'A' cut for Olympics in the 200m Butterfly event at the Sette Colli Trophy in Rome on Saturday. The qualifying standard was 1:56.48.

The 27-year-old, who represented India in the 2016 Rio Olympics, made the Tokyo Games ''A'' standard, set at 1:56.48 seconds, by 0.1 seconds. The Kerala swimmer has been continuously improving his performance in the 200m butterfly event. Last week, in the Belgrade Trophy swimming competition, he had clocked 1:56.96 seconds to miss the elusive ''A'' qualification mar

The Swimming Federation of India (SFI) had earlier announced Srihari Nataraj and Maana Patel as their nominations for the Universality Places for the Tokyo Olympics. Nataraj earlier came very close to breach the 'A' cut. He had clocked 53.90 seconds bettering his own national record in the 100m men's backstroke event. However, it was not enough to make the 'A' mark for the Tokyo Games set at 53.85 seconds.