Gaurika Singh is 13 years and 255 days old. She has survived the disastrous earthquake in Nepal which killed 9,000 in April of 2015. She has been selected for the women’s 100 metre backstroke swimming event at the 2016 Olympics. She is the youngest competitor at the Rio Olympics. And like every teenager, she sums her significant achievements up with the all-encompassing word, ‘cool’.
The heats for the 100 M back for women are on Sunday and Gaurika – a Universality Place selection from Nepal – is the star attraction in the event.
Quoted by The Indian Express, Singh is naturally excited to be the youngest swimmer and participant at Rio.
“That’s quite cool, a bit unreal too. I wanted to go but wasn’t sure I’d be able to because I’d be too young. When I found out a month ago, it was a big shock,” she said.
Competing in an event which has seen the likes of West Germany’s Ulrike Richter and the U.S.A’s Natalie Coughlin hold sway over the world records for years, Singh will be swimming alongside famous names like Brazil’s Etiene Medeiros and Australia’s Emily Seebohme. However, Singh herself is the holder of no fewer than seven national records in the short course pools in Nepal.
However, for the teenager who moved to England with her family when she was two years old, her achievements in the pool pale in comparison to the horror of the earthquake she witnessed while she was in her home country to participate in the national championship last year.
“It was terrifying," recounted Singh, as quoted by the Rio Olympics’ official website. "We [Gaurika, her mother and brother Sauren] were on the fifth floor of a building that we couldn’t escape from, so we sheltered under a table for 10 minutes in the middle of the room and had to go down the stairs afterwards amid the aftershocks. Fortunately, it was a new building so it did not collapse like others around,” she said.
Singh has not only made her country proud on several occasions before, but she has also donated 200 pound sterlings – her winnings from the national championships – to for earthquake relief in Nepal.
With an individual selection time of 1:07.31, Gaurika can be hopeful to make it to the semi-finals – an achievement that will be of great significance in Nepal’s swimming Olympic history.
