Asian Age Group Swimming Championships | Will be up there and clocking personal bests, says Maana Patel

Maana Patel is happy to be back to her chirpy self after an 18-month injury lay-off between 2016 and 2018, following a tear in her left shoulder. She is inching towards her best and the evidence was in the pool on the opening day of the 10th Asian Age Group Swimming Championship in Bengaluru when she claimed the gold in the 50m backstroke. Maana was happy with her performance and felt confident about her gradual recovery back to her best.

“I got a 29 [29.92s] after three years. So I am really happy,” the 19-year-old said to Sportstar 

“I am gradually back to believing in myself and in the next few months, I will be up there and clocking personal bests.”

Those days she sat out because of the injury were “like hell,” she said. Ever since Maana broke all three senior backstroke records (50m, 100m, and 200m) at a young age of 13 back in 2013, the burden of expectations has been immense. She had then dreamt about Rio 2016 glory but only for things to take an abrupt turn.

“I just wanted to quit swimming. I thought I'd never come back and I was finding it hard to believe in myself. I had insomnia and lost a lot of weight. I was depressed. Then surgeons told me I couldn't support a surgery because I didn't have big muscles. So I was asked to do physiotherapy instead. The rehab stretched to 1.5 years,” Patel said.

She added that her recovery process was elongated because of her own loss of self-belief. But her mother helped her overcome that trauma and now she is happy she did not quit.

A few words of motivation by none other than Michael Phelps earlier this year acted as a booster dose. “He told me that ‘if you have been out of the water for 18 months, then it will take 36 months to get back to the same level again.’ That sort of eased things a bit,” she said.

To be sure, Maana is still some way off her best. Her timing of 1:05.08 in the 100m backstroke on Thursday that fetched her a silver is good three seconds behind even the B-mark for Olympic qualification. But she is confident of improving.

“I need to be patient. I basically tell myself that I have faced challenges before and I can do it again. There is nothing new. Just the water and me,” she concluded.