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| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| National team |  India | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | September 27, 1997 Gurugram, Haryana, India | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Swimming | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Strokes | Freestyle | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Shivani Kataria (born 27 September 1997) is an Indian swimmer. She competes in the women's 200m freestyle. [1] She represented India at 2016 Summer Olympics . She has also won many medals at South Asian Games and Asian Age Group Championship . [1]
Shivani was born in Haryana, and raised in Gurugram where she attended DAV Public School. [2] She started swimming at 6 at a summer camp at Baba Gang Nath Swimming Centre near her house. Her parents were supportive. [3] [4] She started competing in district level events under her first coach Mr. Yadav and won the bronze medal at CBSE nationals in Gujarat. [2] In 2012, she decided to become a professional swimmer and started swimming two hours in the morning and two in the evening along with an hour of core exercises during the day. [2] She earned her Bachelor’s degree in History from Hansraj College, Delhi. [5] [6]
Shivani finished sixth in the 200m freestyle at the 2013 Asian Youth Championships and won a gold medal at the 2016 South Asian Games. [1] In 2015, she trained for a year at the FINA camp at Thyanpura in Phuket, Thailand, [3] [7] where she swam three times a day. She clocked 2:04:00 in that camp and was closest to a time slot level, called the B Cut. [2]
Shivani was selected as India's wildcard entry for the Rio Olympics by the Swimming Federation of India (SFI), [1] making her the first Indian women to swim in the Summer Olympics since 2004 in Athens. [3] She competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in the women's 200 metre freestyle event; her time of 2:09.30 in the heats did not qualify her for the semifinals. She holds most of India's national records. Shivani sees the 2016 Olympics qualification more as a learning curve which will strengthen her chances in the 2020 Olympic. [4]
