India's fastest swimmer is juggling tehsildar duties, faces a money crunch and still trains twice a day

Virdhawal Khade is India’s fastest swimmer, holds numerous national records and became the youngest swimmer to represent India in an Olympic event in 2008. He also brought home an Asian Games 50-metre Butterfly category (bronze) medal — ending a 24-year wait for India in the process.

Yet Khade is still finding it extremely difficult to get sponsors to travel to the World Championships in Russia (an Olympics qualifier event) and is waiting to hear from the government on funding — for an event less than a month away.

“It’s really difficult to get sponsorship so I am paying around Rs 2 lakh from my own pocket so that I can attend the World Championships and my father is also helping me out,” Khade was quoted as saying by mid-day .

The general secretary of the Swimming Federation of India said that Khade’s case will be discussed with the sports ministry on 8 July.

Khade was not even 17 when he competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and won at the Asian Games when he was 19. Six years later, he is still India’s fastest in the pool and hopes to compete in the 50m and 100m Freestyle events in Rio in 2016.

“I can’t swim full time anymore. It’s difficult to do my job and swim as well. The most difficult thing is to keep yourself motivated to work hard on both fronts,” Khade said.

Khade has double duties as a class I officer — in charge of Dahisar and Khar as tehsildar. Between his training and tehslidar job, he is hard at work for 15 hours a day. He practices twice a day (5.30 AM to 8.30 AM and 6 PM to 8.30 PM) with office hours squeezed in between.

“Being a tehsildar is different and it is a really big responsibility. You have to deal with a lot of people. Managing all these things is a big challenge,” Khade told the tabloid.

He needs to clock 22.02 seconds to qualify for Rio and his best time (50m freestyle) is 22.55. However, his coach in ‘confident’ he will make the cut.

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