19-year-old Dhruvish Vakharia, Integrated MBA, Class of 2024, Amrut Mody School of Management, has won the Silver Medal at the 5th All India Finswimming Federation Cup 2022, clocking 26:01 seconds in the senior category. The Championship was organised by Underwater Sports Association India between August 4 and 7, 2022 at Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The national medal comes as a high point for Dhruvish, earlier a state medallist who has 12 state medals in swimming to his credit.

Dhruvish was passionate about swimming from the age of seven and would train for over six hours daily by the time he was a state-level swimmer in 2014. However, he had to take a break from the sport to focus on his academics. “It was difficult for me but I took a break to focus on academics. I resumed swimming only last year,” he adds. Dhruvish is grateful to his coach, Rohit Yadav, who unearthed his skills once more and asked him to try out a new form in swimming - finswimming. An underwater sport, finswimming requires swimmers to wear a fin and a snorkel. Dhruvish began to prepare in earnest, dedicating over four hours daily for the past year and a half. “This time round, I was very certain I didn’t want to give up due to my academics. I had caught up well and I am grateful that Ahmedabad University, in spite of its rigorous programme, gave me the opportunity to take leaves for this event,” he says. Dhruvish hopes to have the bandwidth to pursue both swimming as well as finswimming in the future.