The youngest from the Indian contingent at the Paris Olympic Games 2024 is a 14-year-old swimmer from Bengaluru Dhinidhi Desinghu. (More Sports News)
The youngster who qualified for the Paris Games on a universality quota will participate in the women's 200-meter freestyle event. Desinghu along with Srihari Nataraj is the only Indian to represent the country in swimming events in Paris.
While Nataraj also qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, for Desinghu her first tryst with the Olympics has come at a very young age.
Dhinidhi has her little eyes, already strained from class ninth studies, on the big Olympic medal in Paris. While that might be tough, the teenager has put in the hard yards to be where she is currently.
The Bengaluru girl won seven national golds and is the youngest female swimmer to achieve this distinction. The 14-year-old also holds the national record in women’s 200m freestyle. She has already represented India in the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games.
As a child, Desinghu did not like swimming and was scared to be in the water. "I didn’t like the water, I didn’t want to get in. I couldn’t get my feet into the pool, I couldn’t get my head inside. It was a struggle,” Dhinidhi told The Indian Express. “I was six back then. When I returned the next year, I was still too scared."
However, she eventually got used to it and with her parents backing, Desinghu started climbing the ladders.
Soon her prodigious talent started to stand out among the rest and within no time Desinghu is now at the biggest stage of them all - The Olympics.
In Paris, the teenager is excited to meet her idol - seven-time Olympic gold medallist swimmer Katie Ledecky.
"I made a greeting card last year for her. I used to think that whenever I get a chance to meet her, I will give this to her. I looked up at her from a very young age and luckily, I got this chance. Hopefully I can give it to her in Paris. I will be on the seventh moon if I get a chance to even see her," she told PTI.
