The part of sport nobody saw
I learned to swim almost accidentally. My parents put me into a learn-to-swim camp when I was seven. Within a couple of months I was competing. At nine, I got my first taste of ocean swimming, and over the next decade swimming became the organizing principle of my life.
The visible part went extraordinarily well. Swimming took me places I could never have imagined as a seven-year-old. It gave me recognition that still follows my name today.
But there was another part of competitive sport that very few people saw. Someone had to pay for it.
We came from a humble background. Marathon swimming, especially internationally, was expensive. There were travel costs, preparation, accommodation, support teams and competition expenses. For some events, my family borrowed money. I remember one national meet in Calcutta when we did not have enough for the train tickets. My family found a way.
As I moved onto the international circuit, the numbers became much larger. By the late 1990s, preparing for and competing in a single international event could cost six to ten lakh rupees (~$17-25K in 1997 parity). That was a very different amount of money in India twenty-five years ago.
The state government supported me for one full year, and the Government of India helped as well. I remain grateful for both. What we never found was sustained corporate sponsorship. So between competitions, my father did what he had to do. He knocked on doors.
The meeting I never forgot
I hated watching him do it.
One industrialist in Chennai became a particularly painful example. My father approached him several times. On the last occasion, he took me along.
