Thirsting for excellence

FROM A girl who took to swimming merely as a learning exercise and then went on to win a gold medal in the national championship, Harika Reddy has undergone a major change in her outlook. Just 11 years and only three years of serious training in the sport, the bright-eyed girl is already dreaming of soaring higher.... an international championship medal, an Olympic medal..! That is what success sometimes does. That is what success did to Nisha Millet, her predecessor, who rose to become one of the best in the sport in India. Nisha did not of course win medals in Asiad or Olympics. Not yet, but the former Tamil Nadu girl, now Bangalore-based won a scholarship to train abroad but more importantly she had the media focussed on her through her performances in Indian waters.

There is something common about Nisha's early years and Harika now. Comparisons can be odious but Nisha's thirst for excellence started right in Chennai, at the Shenoy Nagar SDAT pool and under the same Coach T. Chandrasekharan. The soft-spoken SDAT Coach, who has quite a few wards at the Shenoy Nagar pool was reminded of Nisha when he saw the enthusiasm in Harika. "When she thinks of something, she rarely stops short of getting that", observed the girl's father Nagarjuna Reddy, a former Central Excise hockey player, about his daughter's trait. Rather than waste that trait on unwanted things at home, the father put her into a sport where individualistic streaks can mean much more than a team sport that he was in.

The similarity with Nisha does not end there. As Chandrasekharan was to point out, Harika was the first girl to win a gold medal for Tamil Nadu in the sub-junior section after Nisha's success in 1993. Nisha set a national record then. Harika fell short of that at Margaon but, the sixth standard studious girl (She tops in studies too) from SBOA school is confident she can put in the efforts demanded by her Coach to taste greater success. What is inspiring to her right now is that the next national is in Chennai itself.

Harika has all the backing from her parents. In fact papa Nagarjuna even decided to forego his government quarters to take a rented house close to the pool so as to facilitate her training. Only, with the city in the grip of water-scarcity, the Shenoy Nagar pool is closed and she has instead to currently travel 15 km away to the bigger Velachery Pool (which was one of the gifts to the city in the wake of the 1995 SAF Games) for her daily routines. Small sacrifice that for a girl, who holds the promise of being one of the best bets from the State at the national level. Though the gold came in the 50m freestyle event, Coach Chandrasekharan felt that the girl was good in butterfly and breaststroke. What he prays is that the girl will continue to show the enthusiasm that has marked her first big success.

Harika faces no dearth of encouragement from her school, nor her classmates, who ensure that whatever she missed in the class was shared with her later. Perhaps State government recognition will follow and maybe she would be provided facility to train at any of the pools in the State.

For a girl, who broke Tamil Nadu's eight-year gold drought at the sub-junior level, Harika has many more promises to keep and miles to go. Only time will tell if she can fill the vacuum created by the shifting to Bangalore of the Millet sisters— Nisha and Reshma.

S. R. SURYANARAYAN

Chennai

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