Srihari Nataraj came agonisingly close to becoming the first Indian swimmer ever to achieve the A-mark Olympic Qualifying Time, before falling short by 0.22s in men’s 100m backstroke event at the Uzbekistan Open Swimming Championships on Thursday.

The 20-year-old’s timing of 54.07s in the final was enough to secure him the gold medal, but was insufficient to meet the Tokyo 2020 Games A-mark (53.85s).

Nonetheless, it was a creditable effort by Srihari, who brought down his previous best timing of 54.69s by more half a second. For perspective, his timing in the final, and in the heats earlier on Thursday (54.10), would have both earned Srihari a place in the semifinals of 2016 Rio Olympics and 2019 FINA World Swimming Championships.

On the day, there were also gold medals for Sajan Prakash (400m freestyle, 3:56.03s), Shivani Kataria (400m freestyle, 4:38.05s), Maana Patel (100m backstroke, 1:04.47s) and Chahat Arora (100m breaststroke, 1:16.15s).