Kutraleeshwaran

Kutraleeshwaran Ramesh (born 8 November 1981), popularly known as Kutraleeshwaran or Kutral, is an Indian swimmer and the founder of Kutraleeshwaran Sports Foundation which aims to help Indian sportspersons who are suffering financially.

A winner of the prestigious Arjuna award for sportspersons from Indian government, he also entered the Guinness Book of World records when he was just 13 years old, by swimming across six channels in a single calendar year, a feat which was never achieved by anyone else till date.

Currently, he runs a foundation named Kutraleeshwaran Sports Foundation to help Indian sportspersons who are suffering financially to spend for their sporting activities.

Kutral was born in Erode, Tamil Nadu.

He is the second born child to Ramesh, an advocate at the Madras High Court and his wife Sivakami, a homemaker.

His family moved to Chennai when he was one month old.

He married Brindha Ananthan.

He began to swim at the age of 4 to 5, when he was let to swim in a big well in his native village, aided by a dry bottle guard, which was used as a swimming ring.

His enthusiasm and interest in swimming amazed his parents, who enrolled him for swimming classes during his summer vacation.

Seeing Kutral learn all four strokes in around a week, his coach was impressed.

He advised Kutral's parents to continue the coaching post the vacations, which his parents adhered to, seeding his swimming career much early in his life.

His first major participation in a swimming event was at the age of seven, in a district-level swimming contest known as the "Ribbon Meet" conducted in Chennai.

It was called a ribbon meet, because the top six of the eight district-level finalists won ribbons as prizes.

In that contest, he won sixth position and a ribbon.

He took part in many district and state-level contests.

In the early and middle 1990s, when he was into full time swimming, private corporate sponsors for athletes were non-existent and managing the mounting expenses involved in participating in international events in individual capacity was challenging.

Further, the situation in India for sportspersons (other than cricketers) was not as encouraging.

It was very common to come across news on ex-athletes (including many champions) suffering in extreme poverty, doing daily wages for sustenance etc., which discouraged him to take up sports as the major career option.

At the age of ten (in 1991), he took part in 5 km swimming competition in the sea.

Despite being the youngest participant, he placed fourth.

In 1994, his next swimming expedition was to surpass Mihir Sen's record of completing five channels in a calendar year, a record that was unbroken for over 30 years.

He first swam across the Palk Strait (Ram Setu), which lies between Tamil Nadu, India and Sri Lanka in April 1994 at the age of 12.

After completing Palk strait, he went on to cross the English Channel on 15 August 1994.

Notably, 15 August is the Independence day of India and he started swimming at 6AM UK time on this day in UK and reached French shore on the same evening.

He swam across the Rottnest Channel in Australia, the Straits of Messina at Italy, and the Zannone Circeo at Italy.

Finally, he crossed the Ten Degree Channel on 30 December 1994.

Thus, he swam across the six channels, all during the calendar year 1994, and his feat was included in the Guinness Book of World Records.

After setting the stage and proving his mettle as a marathon swimmer by swimming across various straits, he started taking part in swimming competitions all over the world.

The Tamil Nadu State government sponsored and provided holistic support for his entire Guinness record contributing swims (1994).

Between 1995 and 1998, he was the only participant from Asia of the 25 swimmers selected from across the world for the World Series in Swimming.

He represented India in more than six competitions around the world and won medals for India, which includes a first prize in Switzerland.

The Indian Government sponsored one of his International competitions (1995).

Notably, he managed these feats in parallel with his elementary and higher secondary education.

He was awarded the Arjuna Award by the Indian Government for bringing laurels to the country and for the Guinness record in 1996.

Being recipient of this award at 14 years, he became (and is still) the youngest person to have received this award.

Among other recipients of the award in the same year was the famous cricketer Javagal Srinath.

Therefore, he made a conscious decision to retire early from professional swimming in 1998 to take up education as his prime area of concentration.

Kutral did his schooling in DAV, Gopalapuram, Chennai.

The school was supportive to him as he pursued his passion of swimming and conducted extra classes for him when he missed classes owing to his involvement in sports.

He obtained a bachelor's degree in engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy.