India’s Indiver Sairam and Willson Sing clinch historic diving bronze in Asian Aquatics

Ahmedabad, Sep 29 (PTI) In a historic first, India’s Indiver Sairam and Willson Sing Ningthoujam bagged the 10m men’s synchronized diving bronze medal on day two of the 11th Asian Aquatics Championships here on Monday.

The Indian divers have never managed to clinch a medal in the past editions of this prestigious event, and the feat here has put them in strong contention to earn a berth for next year’s Asian Games in Nagoya, Japan.

The 18-year-old Sairam and the 32-year-old Willson Sing, both from Manipur, train at the Army Sports Institute (ASI) in Pune.

They scored a brilliant 300.66 points to bag the bronze, finishing behind China’s Zhangyu Cui, Zhanhong Xu (381.75) and Malaysia’s Bertrand Rhodict Lises, Enrique M. Harold (329.73).

Speaking about the medal-winning dive, the duo’s coach Shannon Roy from Australia, said, “I’ve been working with them for the past two years and honestly, they were quite behind the rest of the world and Asia.

“But over the last six months, we've really put a focus on the synchronised events, platform and 3m springboard events. We've spent a lot of time on a couple of camps overseas, in Malaysia, and World Championships in Singapore.” In swimming, as many as 12 Indian swimmers made it to the final of their respective events and two relay teams also entered the final.

However, only Kushagra Rawat won a bronze medal in the 1500m freestyle.

He stopped the clock at 15:30.88 while Huy Hoang Nguyen of Vietnam clinched the gold with a time of 15:15.01 and Ilya Sibirtsev of Uzbekistan won silver at 15:23.35. PTI UNG BS BS