I knew I wasn’t done with swimming: Virdhawal Khade

He upstaged an Olympic champion on the comeback trail but one of India’s most accomplished swimmers, Virdhawal Khade, says he had all but “forgotten” how to perform at the big stage owing to the mundanity of a job and injury setbacks.The 26-year-old, the youngest swimmer from India to qualify for the Olympics at the age of 16 in the 2008 Beijing edition, has risen back to prominence after outpacing Olympic gold medallist Joseph Schooling in the 100-meter freestyle event at the Singapore National Championships.
The performance couldn’t have come at a better time for the Maharashtra lad as he prepares for the Asian Games in Indonesia after a less-than-impressive show at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.”The CWG was the first big competition after 2010 and maybe I had just forgotten how to perform at the big stage. I was training very hard but wasn’t able to put it together. I think between the CWG and now I have learned how to swim faster,” Khade told PTI in an interview.The Asian Games trigger good memories for the imposing swimmer, who had won a bronze medal — India’s first in 24 years — during the 2010 edition in Guangzhou.
That performance had fetched him the job of a Tehsildar with Maharashtra government, something that ended up far from being an incentive.Khade put swimming on the backburner to focus on his job and the cost was missing two Olympics, the 2014 Commonwealth, and the Asian Games.
“What happened to me was because of my achievements. The Maharashtra government recruited me but our state policy was a little too restrictive for athletes. So that didn’t allow me initially to come out and train and while I was working I missed out on the Asian Games, Olympics, and CWG,” Khade said.A serious knee injury added to his woes and Khade’s career seemed all but over. However, he had other plans. He wasn’t going down without a fight.
“I always had swimming at the back of my mind even while working. I knew I wasn’t done. There were a few things like winning a gold medal in the Asian Games, giving the Olympics another crack which was incomplete. I didn’t swim for some 3-4 years. That always kept bugging me,” he said.