New Delhi, June 26: A 14-year-old Dhinidhi Desinghu and Srihari Nataraj are selected to represent India at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games under "Universality Quota", Swimming Federation of India (SFI) announced on Wednesday. While Nataraj will compete in the men's 100 backstroke event, Dhinidhi will participate in the women's 200m freestyle competition.
This will be Srihari Nataraj’s second Olympic appearance after Tokyo 2020 while Dhinidhi will be making her debut in Paris. Moreover, Dhinidhi at 14 will be the youngest athlete in Indian contingent for Paris Games.
Since no Indian swimmers managed to achieve the Olympic Qualification Time (OQT) or the Olympic Consideration Time (OCT) in any event within the Paris 2024 swimming qualification window between March 1, 2023, and June 23, 2024, the SFI had the option to request for Universality quota places. Under the Universality Quota rule, NOCs without any qualified athlete or relay team may enter a maximum of two athletes one woman and one man in one event each.
In addition, NOCs with no athletes who have achieved an OQT nor any athlete invited by World Aquatics through the OCT may enter a maximum of one woman and one man, provided the athletes have competed in one or more of the 2022 and 2024 World Championships, according to Olympics.com. Srihari competed at the World Aquatics Championships 2023 in Fukuoka, Japan while Dhinidhi swam in the 2024 Worlds held in Doha, Qatar.
In the male category, Srihari was placed at the top of the world Aquatics points table with 849 points, whereas Dhinidhi was leading the women's table with 749 points. Aryan Nehra narrowly missed the universality spot being just 2 points behind Srihari after his last qualification attempt in Canada. Swimming competitions at Paris 2024 will take place between July 27 and August 4 at the Paris La Defense Arena.
