Going for Bigger than Gold

In the third of our Beyond the Blocks stories we feature Tharusha Perera who is paving the way for Sri Lankan swimmers.

**RE-PUBLISHED FROM ABC SPORT AS IT WAS POSTED 21 Jan 2025**

Tharusha Perera takes on Australian Open Water Swimming Championships to set example for South Asian community

Wed 22 Jan

By Simon Smale – An online sports reporter for the ABC since 2018 who specialises in covering a wide range of different sports.

There’s something special about open water swimming.

Tharusha Perera (pictured) knows more than most about the benefits and freedom being in the vast expanse of the ocean with nothing more than a pair of togs and goggles.

As the year 12 student speaks to ABC Sport from his home in Melbourne, his voice lifts as he describes the feeling of being in the open water.

“You feel weightless,” Perera says.

“When I came to open water it was like a whole new incredible world for me.

“You can battle each other out in the ocean and everything’s like … you have no control of the situation.

“You can’t control the conditions, the weather, the waves, all those things.”

Tharusha has always enjoyed swimming.

When he arrived in Australia with his parents from Sri Lanka aged two and a half, his dad, Kasun, knew it was important that Tharusha should learn to swim, signing him up for lessons immediately.

“My parents thought it would be good idea to put me into swimming classes so I can learn how to swim for survival,” Tharusha says.

It was a big hit with the youngster.

“Once I got older, I realised that I kinda enjoyed the sport compared to every other sport,” he says.

“When I was young I did a lot of sports, but swimming was the one sport that felt like I really connected with.

“When I was nine, my dad decided to put me in a swim club for the first time.

“And that’s when, I guess, my swimming journey began.”

It’s been a solid progression since then.

Drawn to the longer distance events, Tharusha started to swim 800 and 1,500m events in the pool.

But his eyes were really opened the the possibilities of open water when he was 11 years old upon the urging of his coach, former Commonwealth Games gold medallist Kelly Stubbins, and was immediately hooked.

Now, he is among the favourites to compete for a medal in both the 5km and 10km 18-19-year races at the Australian Open Water Swimming Championships in Bussleton, Western Australia, this week (23-26 Jan 2025), having already competed at the world junior championships last year in Alghero, Italy.

Being drawn towards the longer, more tactical version of the sport was not an accident.

Aside from enjoying the physicality of having to battle from buoy to buoy out in the ocean, Tharusha’s own physical attributes guided him towards the open water rather than the pool.

“Yeah, like, I’m quite short,” Tharusha says with a laugh.

“So for me, doing sprints is quite difficult, competing with all those, 6 foot 7 dudes, it’s really quite impossible to keep up with them.

“But, since then I realised your height doesn’t really matter in open water.

“It’s more like stamina and how much you can really hold and really execute your race plan properly.

“That really gave me advantage over everyone else.”

There is a bigger side to Tharusha’s efforts in the water than personal achievements or medals.

His goal is to be a role model for his entire community.

According to Royal Life Saving Australia, one in four adults in Australia are either weak swimmers or can’t swim at all.

The 2024 annual National Drowning Report, released by Royal Life Saving (RLS) in October last year, shows 323 people drowned in Australia in the last financial year, with 25 per cent of those people born outside Australia.

A 10-year research study by RLS estimates one in three people (34 per cent) who drown in Australia are born overseas.

Tharusha’s parents are among those, just like many other migrants to Australia.

A 2022 survey from the UNSW Beach Safety Research Group found that almost half of the 249 migrants surveyed from South Asian nations admitted they did not know how to swim.

Incredibly, they said they were still willing to go in the water anyway.

With so few swimmers from the South Asian diaspora competing at the highest level of swimming, Tharusha said it was important to be a visible representation of where swimming can take you, no matter where you’re from.

“It’s pretty important since open water is not really such a huge sport in Sri Lanka,” Tharusha says.

“The biggest sport in Sri Lanka is cricket and that’s for all of South Asia, it is all about cricket.

“So to be pushing Sri Lanka into open water is like a pretty big thing for me, so I can sort you inspire the future generations and show how far you can go in the swimming world.

“It would be pretty big for me to sort of pave a way for South Asians for open water.”