Syamala Goli Becomes Animated Across Her Aquatic Success
Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.
Syamala Goli had to postpone her attempt across the Palk Strait for over a year, but she made the most of her COVID-19 pandemic wait. She crossed the 30 km strait in 13 hours 43 minutes, largely training herself and with the help of a large escort crew. Goli became only the second woman to cross the strait between Sri Lanka and India after the renowned Indian marathon swimmer Bula Choudhury.
Goli, a 47-year-old India entrepreneur, previously founded an animation company and is now focused on her next seven channels in order to achieve her ultimate goal of the Oceans Seven.
Goli explains, “In India, after 30 years, both men and women feels like they become old and they cannot do anything. But in my view, age is just a number. It is changing like a calendar page every day.
I am not a swimmer from childhood. Just started learning only four years back only. My journey went a very tough stages from aquaphobia to aqua crush. Now I am in deep love with water. We have no awareness on swimming in both Telugu states in India. I came from a very small farmer’s family with a lot of struggles with money. We had no chances to go out and do something after a marriage in our families. That is the reason, the Indian media showed interested to publish articles about my story.
I increased my swimming distance from 0 km to 10 km in one month without any coach or observation. I am not perfect in freestyle and am still looking for good training. But I have very few chances to reach and reading every story and articles [possible].
When I saw an article regarding a crossing of the English Channel two years back, I was inspired to do it. My open water interest started like that two years ago. Now, I can swim 30 to 40 km in a pool as well as in the open water. I have no proper guidance on training, diet, or workouts. Just running, swimming and light warm-ups are in my daily activities. I eat homemade food like, boiled eggs, rice, curd, etc. is my simple diet. We have very very little encouragement in India, but I was the first person to participated in FINA World Masters Swimming Championship open water event from India in 2019. I feel proud to represent our nation in the FINA World Masters.”
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