Arati Saha, the first woman from Asia to swim across the English Channel, was born on this day. Saha was 19 when she swam across the channel.

Her swimming talent was noticed early and her father enrolled her at the Hatkhola Swimming Club in north Calcutta. When she was five, she won a gold medal in the freestyle event at a local swimming competition.

Soon she moved to state-level competitions and then to national-level events, winning medals and breaking records. At 12, Saha represented India at the 1952 Summer Olympics.

In 1959, she started preparing for the Butlin International Cross Channel Swimming Race, which would require her to cross the English Channel. The event, in which among the 58 participants from 23 countries only five were women, was to be held from Cape Gris Nez, France, to Sandgate, England. Saha could not complete the race, though she came close to the English coast.

She did not give up. On September 29, 1959, she started from Cape Gris Nez and swam for 16 hours and 20 minutes to reach Sandgate and hoisted the Indian flag.

The Bengal government had always supported her. She received the Padma Shri in 1960, the first Indian sportswoman to receive the award.

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