Jai Jaswanth (10), swimmer 
Citizen

Model Citizen: Young champion wants to emulate Kutraleeswaran

Inspired by Kutraleeswaran, another young swimmer has set out to swim across the Palk Strait from Talaimannar in Sri Lanka to Dhanushkodi in Rameswaram. R Jai Jaswanth, a 10-year-old Class 6 student from Allinagaram in Theni, who loves swimming, arrived in Rameswaram on Wednesday.

migrator

Chennai

Running high on confidence, he then started to Talaimannar in Sri Lanka along with his father, coach and a medical team on a fishing boat. He would start swimming from Talaimannar around 3.30 am on March 28 with a target to reach Rameswaram on the same evening around 5 pm. To feed his passion for swimming, Jai Jaswanth has been training since 2016 to complete this task. He has displayed his talents in the Under 10 category competitions at the district, State and national level. 

However, it was his first time experience to swim across the sea covering distance of nearly thirty kilometres. In April 1994, a young swimmer Kutraleeswaran from Erode created a record after he swam across Palk Strait from Talaimannar to Rameswaram in a short span of 16 hours. He received Arjuna award and entered into Guinness world record in 1996. His achievement motivated Jai Jaswanth to attempt a similar feat.

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