Children’s groups furious over girl's 16-hour swim

At 5am on Thursday nine-year-old Shristi Singh plunged into her school swimming pool in the northern Indian town of Dehradun. This was to be no ordinary morning dip — she climbed out again 16 hours and 33 minutes later.

Having covered about 25 miles (40km) non-stop, according to Mandeep Singh, her delighted coach, Shristi found herself at the centre of a row with child rights activists questioning whether the swim — completed in front of cheering crowds and television crews — could have damaged her health.

Mr Singh said that Shristi wanted to become the youngest person to swim the Channel — a record held by Thomas Gregory, who achieved the feat aged 11 years and 11 months in 1988.



“Now that she has swum non-stop for 16 hours I don’t see any reason why she shouldn’t go for the Channel,” Mr Singh said. He added that Shristi trained for up to eight hours a day.

You don’t get champions by swimming for two or three hours a day,” he said. “Look at Chinese children who compete in the Olympics — what age do you think they start training?”

Comparisons were drawn with another Indian child sports prodigy, Budhia Singh, who ran 40 miles in seven hours when he was 5, in 2006. A local government official said: “This is very much like Budhia’s case. Swimming continuously could damage the child’s organs and retard her growth. We don’t encourage such feats.”