Tirthank Pegu touched the wall in 2:01.25 to snatch bronze in the men’s 200m butterfly. With that furious final stroke, the 17-year-old from Assam became the first Indian male swimmer to win a medal at the Youth Olympics. He did it the hard way—haunted by self-doubt, gasping through lactic acid, and dragging the ghosts of a near-miss just days earlier across the lane line.
Yet the podium finish tasted bittersweet. Days prior, Pegu suffered heartbreak in the 100m butterfly, finishing fourth in 54.98 seconds—a brutal 0.27 seconds shy of the bronze. That agonizing margin crept into his head before the 200m final. "The biggest area I need to improve is my mindset. I need to become more positive and more confident in myself," Pegu said during a virtual interaction on Monday. "I truly believe my medal could have been a different colour if I hadn’t been struggling with confidence over the past month."
The anxiety nearly paralyzed him on the blocks. "To be honest, I was really nervous. I was focusing too much on the medal and worrying about disappointing my coach and everyone who supported me," he admitted. "During the last 50m, the only thing in my head was, 'I hope I get a medal.'"
Behind the hardware lies a decade-and-a-half of grinding family sacrifice. Pegu took to the pool at age four, steered away from boxing by his mother, who feared facial injuries. His late father, Kunal, a former district-level amateur boxer, poured every rupee into his son's aquatic dream. "It was a struggle financially, but he never showed that struggle to me," Pegu said. "He did everything he could for my swimming. My mother often says that my father never invested in anything else. I was his investment."
Trained out of the Inspire Institute of Sport, Pegu dedicated the breakthrough to his father and his coach, former Olympian Sandeep Sejwal, who is now set to step away from coaching. "Sandeep sir feels like family now," Pegu said. "He helped me not only in swimming but also in life. He taught me how elite athletes think and what it takes to compete at the highest level."
Pegu’s podium finish arrived on the heels of Dhinidhi Desinghu's medal, completing an unprecedented double for Indian swimming at the Youth Olympics. But Pegu brushed aside suggestions of an overnight miracle. Swimmers like Sajan Prakash and Srihari Nataraj, he noted, carved out the blueprint. Now, Pegu is widening his sights to the 50m butterfly and the 400m individual medley, hell-bent on turning this junior milestone into an elusive senior Olympic final.