Maana Patel, who is an Indian woman swimmer has booked her place at the Tokyo Olympics with the help of “universality quota”, said the Swimming Federation of Indiaย
She is going to participate in the 100m backstroke event and has went on to become the third Indian swimmer, after Srihari Nataraj and Sajan Prakash to achieve the Olympic Qualification timing(OQT) A level.
Indian Female Swimmer Maana Patel Qualifies For Tokyo Olympics 2021
Patel is an Indian swimmer, whose speciality is backstroke swimming and belongs from Ahmedabad. During the 2009 40th Junior National Aquatic Championship, which was held in Tokyo, she completed the 200m backstroke round in 2:23.41 seconds and went on to break the record by Shikha Tandon in the Asian Age group Championship.
She has a total of 50 gold medals for 200m backstroke event which she had won during the National Games. During the 60th National School Games, which was held in 2015, she won a gold medal in the 100m backstroke event.
During the 2016 South Asian Games, she had won a silver medal in 50m, 100m and 200m backstroke, a bronze medal in 50m freestyle and a gold medal in the 4x100m medley relay.
What is the Universality quota which helped swimmer Maana Patel qualify for Swimming in Olympics?
This quota allows one male and female swimmer from a country to take part in the Olympics and only on one condition that no other swimmer from the similar gender qualifies for the games or receive an invitation from FINA which is based on his/herย Olympic Selection Time (OST), which is also known as B time.
This quota is not usually the ‘B’ quality mark, but Maana knows that for her Olympics is all about a learning experience.
Maana Patel Achievements And Career
The first event that she participated in this year was the Uzbekistan Open Swimming Championship, which was held in April, in which she completed the 100m , backstroke event in 1:04.47 seconds and she had won a gold medal for the same.
During a recent interview with the Times of India she said, “I was quite satisfied with my timing in Uzbekistan. I had to get back to competitive racing and completing it in 1:04 was good.”
She also participated in events which was held in Serbia and Italy to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. During the Belgrade event she went onto improve her national mark for the 100m backstroke.
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