PRADHANMANTRI RASHTRIYA BAL PURUSKAR AWARDEE 2022
Jiya Rai is a 14yr old girl who’s the first swimmer suffering from Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a developmental disability caused by variations in the brain. Despite the hurdles, she didn’t let herself become prey to her determination. She continued her passion and recently she set a new world record by swimming the Srilanka India sea swim in record time i.e, 29 km in 13hr and 5 min at the age of mere 13 years. By doing so she became the youngest and fastest female swimmer to swim across the Palk-Strait after Bula Choudhary who swam the distance in 13hr and 10 min in the year 2004. She swam from Srilanka’s Thalaimannar to Arichalmunai of Dhanushkodi. Her father is an Indian naval sailor and her mother was a teacher but she quit her job to support her daughter in following her passion. Now, she is practicing for her “mission to swim seven oceans.”
Jiya started developing her passion for swimming when she was only 3 years old and at the age of 6 she started taking part in swimming competitions and ended up winning a lot of gold medals.
In national and state swimming, till now, she has won 24 gold and 1 silver medal. She has also been honoured with Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar 2022 which is the highest honour given to Indian citizens only who are below the age of 18.
Our Honourable Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi had praised her through Twitter too. He twitted “Jiya Rai is an inspiration for everyone. At a young age, she defied the odds to become India’s top-ranking open water para swimmer.”