For years they have been representing India but have been unknown

Like the many other sports in India, cricket, badminton and running among others, swimming too has been a sport of high importance. Since the early time, many Indian swimmers have been representing India internationally and winning accolades. But unfortunately we don’t know about these swimmers at all. So here is a list of Indian swimmers that we ought to know about.

Bhakti Sharma The 32-year-old athlete is an Indian Open water swimmer and is the youngest woman ever to set a record in open swimming in the Antarctic waters. Sharma is also the first Asian woman to have achieved that feat. The interesting fact about Sharma is that she swam 2.3 km in 41mins 14 secs in freezing water and has broken the record of Lynne Cox (USA) and Lewis Pugh (Great Britain), after swimming in all the five oceans of the world.

Virdhawal Khade The swimmer represented India by competing in the men's 50, 100, and 200 meters Freestyle swimming events at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. He has set an Indian national record in 100 meters Freestyle, has won a bronze medal in the 50 meters butterfly category at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou – making India's first Asian Games medal in swimming in 24 years. He is also the recipient of the Arjuna Award.

Shikha Tandon A champion swimmer, Tandon has a total of 146 national medals and 36 medals in international competitions, including five gold medals to her credit. She is also the first Indian swimmer to qualify for two separate events in the Olympic competition. The Arjuna Awardee is also the first woman to hold seven national records at a time. Currently, she is the Science Program Lead at the US Anti-doping Agency (USADA) in Colorado Springs, USA.

Maana Patel Indian backstroke swimmer, Patel started swimming from the age of seven and became the first Indian female swimmer to have qualified for the Tokyo Olympics competing in the women's 100m backstroke event. Patel won six medals in the 2016 South Asian games but rose to fame as she broke Shikha Tandon's 200m women's backstroke record in 2013.

A few other Indian swimmers are Sri Chand Bajaj, Bijoy Barman, Bimal Chandra, Hakimuddin Habibulla, Shivani Kataria, Shamsher Khan, Nalin Malik, Isaac Mansoor, Nisha Millet, Dilip Mitra, Prahtip Mitra, Prafulla Mullick Srihari Nataraj, Dolly Nazir, Rehan Poncha, Sangeeta Puri, Arati Saha, Gagan Ullalmath, Sebastian Xavier and Sandeep Sejwal.