Goa’s Sanjana Prabugaonkar bagged her maiden senior medal when she clinched the women’s 200m freestyle silver medal on home turf in the 37th National Games at the Campal Swimming Pool on Sunday.
The 16-year-old, who now trains at the Aqua Nation Sports Academy in Dubai, clocked a timing of 2:08.89 seconds to finish behind Dhinidhi desinghu of Karnataka. Vritti Agarwal of Telangana won the bronze medal.
Sanjana, who had won multiple medals at the junior level, was understandably elated with her performance as she has been troubled with a shoulder injury and had not been training regularly for the last six months and had not competed for a while.
“It’s been a month since I started training regularly. And it feels good to have a meet in my hometown and win my first National Games medal,” said Sanjana, who has been swimming since the age of 7.
Asked about her decision to train in Dubai, Sanjana said the decision was taken during the covid lockdown to go and train in UAE as it was difficult to practice in India. “I liked the training there and then we decided to continue training there.”
Sanjana and her mother now stay in Dubai and the 16-year-old only comes to Goa to give her exams, completing her academies through home tuitions.
“This medal has only motivated me further to work harder,” she added.
