India Creates History in Diving: Indiver Sairem & Wilson Singh Ningthoujam Win Bronze at the 2025 Asian Aquatic Championships
Sairam, 18, and Willson Sing Ningthoujam, 32, both hail from Manipur.
Indian Divers Sairam, Willson Sing Ningthoujam Create History, Bag Bronze At Asian Aquatics Championships
Sairam and Willson Sing Ningthoujam© X (Twitter)
In a historic first, Indian divers Indiver Sairam and Willson Sing Ningthoujam bagged a Bronze medal in the 10m synchronised diving in the men’s category here on Day Two of the 11th Asian Aquatics Championships being held at the state-of-the-art indoor swimming facility at the Veer Savarkar Sports Complex in Ahmedabad on Monday. Meanwhile, the swimmers added three medals to their tally, with Rishabh Das clinching a bronze in the 200m Backstroke, Kushagra Rawat winning a Bronze medal in the 1500m freestyle, and the Indian relay team claiming a silver medal in the 4x200m Freestyle, as per a press release from the Swimming Federation of India (SFI).
The 18-year-old diver Sairam and 32-year-old Willson Sing Ningthoujam, both from Manipur, train at the Army Sports Institute (ASI) in Pune. They scored a brilliant 300.66 points to bag the Bronze medal, finishing behind China’s Zhangyu Cui, Zhanhong Xu with a score of 381.75 and Malaysia’s Bertrand Rhodict Lises, Enrique M. Harold (Malaysia) 329.73. There were total of five countries participating in this event including Uzbekistan and Chinese Taipei who finished fourth and fifth respectively in this event.
The Indian divers have never medaled at this prestigious event, putting them in strong contention to earn a berth for the Asian Games in Nagoya, Japan, next year.
Speaking about their medal-winning dive today, the duo’s coach Shannon Roy from Australia who is appointed by ASI said, “I have 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 in particular, we have 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.”
Getting them prepared about what it is like to compete as a synchronised pair, which is very different from individual, was the first priority. But also exposing them at the World Championships to that higher quality, the higher calibre was important. Getting them prepared for this meet in particular and the long term towards the Asian games
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