When Michael Phelps became the first American male swimmer to qualify for his fifth Olympics, he added a huge incentive for two young Indians heading for their first Olympic Games.
22-year-old Sajan Prakash and 18-year-old Shivani Kataria are huge Phelps fans, and unabashedly so.
Prakash and Kataria stand selected for the Indian contingent through the Universality Rule, which allows countries to nominate one swimmer each even though they may not have met the 'A' standard qualification time.
Prakash will be competing in the 200m butterfly, an event that Phelps has won two of his record 18 gold medals in (he also picked up the silver in 2012), and recently clocked 1:59:27 in Hong Kong, the first time an Indian had clocked under two minutes in the meet. "Phelps is my idol, and his pet event is the same as mine," says Prakash. "I hope we meet in the heats."
Kataria, originally from the northern state of Haryana, was an accidental swimmer who also had a choice of playing tennis for a living. She would swim for most of the year while living in the capital city of New Delhi, but when the winter would make swimming impossible, she would play tennis.
However, after shifting to a more temperate Bangalore in 2012, she tried mastering all four strokes.
"I used to look for videos on the internet," says Kataria of her early days as a swimmer. "One of the first videos that I found was of Phelps, doing the butterfly. The butterfly is my second stroke, incidentally," says Kataria, who will represent India at the 200 m freestyle in Rio. "It is such an elegant stroke, and so tough too!"
Kataria will become the first Indian woman to compete at the Olympics since Shikha Tandon in 2004, and she can't wait to tick one of the boxes left from the 2015 World Championship, her first as a competitor.
"I was so excited that I would get to meet so many swimmers. Katie Ledecky, Cam McEvoy... they were all there," says Kataria. "But Phelps wasn't there since he was serving a suspension."