"You'll get tanned, nobody will want to marry you": Nisha Millet sure knows how to deal with the trolls

nisha millet swimming
From being India’s first female Olympic swimmer to coaching India’s Olympic future

She was the first ever Indian female swimmer to qualify for the Olympic Games, achieving that feat at the Games in Sydney, in 2000. At the time, she was the only swimmer from the country there.

Now, having moved on from her own swimming career, Millet coaches young swimmers at her academy in Bengaluru. Speaking to us at the launch of Team Speedo in April 2016 in Bengaluru, Millet discussed her love of the sport, how she began, and where she is today.

It wasn’t a sudden realization for Millet that she wanted to swim full time after she began with the sport. “Every morning, when I woke up at 5 a.m. – it was cold, I was tired, but the first thing I saw when I woke up were those Olympic rings. That kept me going,” she says, referring to a postcard she had in her room.

But the beginnings weren’t that easy.

Had a fear of water

“Funnily enough,” she says, “I was very scared of the water after having almost drowned. It was my dad who put me into swimming classes back then to get me over that fear.I had a horrible coach to start with, too. If you did something he didn’t like, or didn’t swim properly, and you were holding yourself up with your fingers at the edge of the pool, he’d step on your fingers.“

“Once I got over that point, I became obsessed with the water.”

Here’s where germophobes will want to look away: “I had chickenpox as a kid, and I still wanted to swim. I told my dad, don’t tell anyone I have chickenpox. And then he told me, that’s not how that works. I couldn’t swim for a couple weeks. But by the time I was 10 years old I knew this is what I wanted to do.”

“I narrowly missed out on the 1996 Olympic Games,” she says, then only 16-years-old. “I qualified in 2000, after a lot of hard work, a lot of determination, hours, months, years spent in the pool, training as hard as I could. I did the Olympic qualifiers only 4-5 months before the actual Olympics that year.”

How did it feel when she finally won? “I can’t describe that in words, honestly. When you’ve worked for something your whole life, worked so hard, every fibre of you has gone into that moment. And it’s not just you. Your parents have put in so much, your teammates, your coaches. you’ve missed countless birthdays, holidays, weddings. ”

“As an elite athlete, a lot of your childhood is spent in the pool, working hard while other kids are having fun, going out for movies, parties, being with friends. It hurts then, yes, but none of it makes a difference in the end when you achieve what you set out to achieve, what you wanted to do.”

On attention and adulation

Athletes today are extensively covered in the press, but that was not the case when Millet qualified.”Swimming isn’t even a huge sport now, but back then it was positively sidelined. It wasn’t a well-known sport, and I doubt many Indians even watched me at the Olympics that year. That year, I was the only one, and I was the first Indian female to qualify. These days, there are so many more.

“We’ve since had at least seven athletes who have qualified, three who already have times but need to hit the higher level, ‘A’ qualifying time. It’s amazing to mentor these young athletes, to be around for them, help them live their dreams and achieve their goals of one day swimming at the Olympics.”

What about pressure? It was there then, and it’s there now. Then, as a swimmer, and now as an idol for Millet, who broke the glass ceiling for Indian swimmers 16 years ago.

“Looking back,” she says, the pressure was incredibly intense even then. (It was about)... how long, how hard we trained, for so many years, the fifteen years (here, she gestures strongly, just to emphasize how long it had been) that I spent in the pool, the kind of staggering sacrifices my parents made...”

Her voice strains slightly and then, she smiles. “My parents sold their house to fund my swimming. But in the end, it was all worth it. Representing the country, standing up on that Olympic stage as we watched the torch being lit, you hear the national anthem. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house that evening.”

What it‘s like to be at the Olympics

That experience was staggering to her – and naturally so. “I met some of the world’s best athletes. I remember meeting Muhammad Ali at the Games. It was brilliant.” But detractors persisted, and picked apart everything from her looks, to her size and decided for themselves the implications that would have on her performance.

“This is India, they told me, nobody cares about swimming.” “She’s so skinny and short, they’d say to my family and my coaches. How can she swim?”

The remarks were also ludicrous, and very derogatory. “You’ll get tanned, they told me, and no one will marry you.”

“I never bothered about the remarks, though, and that’s the only way to do it. Have a single-minded goal and shut yourself off. I also think my achievement helped other athletes realise they too could do it, that they had the ability, and just needed to push.”

"Sure enough, at the next Olympics, we had Shikha [Tandon] who qualified, then Rehan [Poncha], then Aaron, and then so many other swimmers. Sandeep [Sejwal] and Virdhawal [Khade] who have all qualified. Now, now that that mental block is gone, we need more work. We need to be able to get our athletes to that world level.

We need to be able to get our athletes to the top 100 of the world. It’s not just about qualifying. It’s about progressing through the rounds, getting to the quarter-finals, to the semis, win medals.”

The year Millet qualified for the Olympic Games, she was the only swimmer to have qualified. In the years since, there have been at least two Indian swimmers at the Olympic Games.

In addition to her transcending that barrier, 2000 was a “pretty good year,” she says. That is an understatement. She was awarded India’s highest sporting honour – the Arjuna Award the same year. “It was brilliant, not just the award, but getting to meet the Prime Minister. The Olympics and the Arjuna Award. Both the same year.”

She was part of the squad captained by Indian tennis legend Leander Paes, who had won bronze in the singles at the previous Olympic Games – and he’s her favourite sportsperson of all time, too.

For now, though, she says she’ll stick to coaching and training. “Not Olympic swimmers, though” she says. “Just young kids who are scared of the water, like I once was. I want them to get over that fear, to get them to love the water. And then, if they take to it, and they love it and want to pursue it, then we could see our new future Olympians. On their own.”

Hopefully they’ll take to the pool like a...fish to water. And they’ll be guided by a former Olympian while they do it.

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Edited by Staff Editor