Srihari Nataraj has started 2025 with a splash.

At the 38th National Games which concluded in Uttarakhand on Friday, the ace swimmer ended with a whopping 10 medals, nine of which were gold.

Karnataka's Srihari was adjudged the best male athlete of the meet. His statemate, 14-year-old swimmer Dhinidhi Desinghu who bagged 11 medals including nine gold, was adjudged the best female athlete.

Srihari bettered his performance from the previous edition of the Games, in Goa in 2023. There, too, he was adjudged the best male athlete with a haul of 10 medals, of which eight were gold.

His stupendous performance this time around surprised even the swimmer a little.

After taking a break post the Paris Olympic Games — his second Olympics after Tokyo — Srihari resumed training only in the middle of November.

"The National Games was a rather sudden announcement and initially I wasn't sure if I wanted to swim and I was absolutely certain that I wasn't going to attempt for the best athlete for which I would need to swim in 10 or more events," Srihari told The Telegraph from Bengaluru.

"I thought I would just show up, swim just a couple of events and that would be it. It would give me an idea of how my training was going.

"But once I started, I even surprised myself at how well I performed," laughed the 24-year-old.

"For example, the 200m freestyle had a stacked field with Sajan Prakash, Aneesh Gowda and Aryan Nehra all in the fray and I thought it would be a lot closer than it eventually turned out to be."

Srihari finished his campaign with gold medals in men's 100m freestyle, 50m backstroke, mixed 4x100m freestyle, 200m freestyle, 4x100m freestyle relay, 4x100m freestyle relay medley, 4x200m freestyle relay, 100m backstroke, mixed 4x100m medley — and a silver — 50m freestyle.

Looking back, how does he evaluate his performance last year?

"I had a good 6-7 months of training prior to the Olympics. I was happy to participate in my second Olympics, though unfortunately, the result wasn't what we were hoping for or expecting. But that's sport at the end of the day.

"However, meeting Nadal and clicking a picture with him was definitely one of the year's high points for me," he grinned.

The year, overall, was quite to Srihari's satisfaction.

"I had a good run in Europe. I won a medal at the Mare Nostrum circuit which is quite a big deal since the best swimmers in the world show up there."

Srihari clinched a silver medal in the 50m backstroke at the Canet-en-Roussillon, France, a part of the Mare Nostrum tour. He clocked 25.50s to claim the second spot behind Hungary’s Adam Jaszo.

(The Mare Nostrum Swim Tour is a prestigious three-part swimming circuit consisting of meets in Canet-en-Roussillon, Barcelona and Monaco. It's considered one of the premier racing circuits in the world.)

After Paris, he stepped away from the pool for a good two months.

He chilled out, met friends, played a lot of other sports, lazed around at home and recharged his batteries.

Now the MBA from Jain University in Bengaluru is ready for the year ahead.

"I have some tournaments through summer where I will participate without trying to peak. I am more focused on the World University Games which will be held in Germany in July."

Thereafter is the Asian Swimming Championships, which India will host in October.

Focused and determined, Srihari, who is now pursuing a postgraduate diploma in sports psychology, aims to be ready for the two big events of 2026 — the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games.