In a historic first, India’s Indiver Sairem and Willson Sing Ningthoujam bagged the 10m men’s synchronised diving bronze medal on the second day of the 11th Asian Aquatics Championships here on Monday.
The result — the first medal for an Indian — put the country in strong contention to earn a berth for next year’s Asian Games in Nagoya, Japan.
The 18-year-old Sairem and the 32-year-old Ningthoujam, both from Manipur, train at the Army Sports Institute (ASI) in Pune.
They scored 300.66 points to bag bronze, finishing behind China’s Zhangyu Cui, Zhanhong Xu (381.75) and Malaysia’s Bertrand Rhodict Lises, Enrique M. Harold (329.73).
Speaking about the medal-winning dive, the duo’s coach, Shannon Roy from Australia, said, “I’ve been working with them for the past two years, and honestly, they were quite behind the rest of the world and Asia.
“But over the last six months, we’ve really put a focus on the synchronised events, platform and 3m springboard events. We’ve spent a lot of time on a couple of camps overseas, in Malaysia, and at the World Championships in Singapore.”
In swimming, 12 Indian swimmers made it to the final of their respective events, and two relay teams also entered the final.
Of them, Kushagra Rawat won a bronze medal in the 1500m freestyle.
He stopped the clock at 15:30.88 while Huy Hoang Nguyen of Vietnam clinched the gold with a time of 15:15.01, and Ilya Sibirtsev of Uzbekistan won silver at 15:23.35.
Published on Sep 29, 2025
