Having enjoyed sports and endurance activities during his school, Rajiv Trivedi, Principal Secretary, Home Department, with additional charge as Director General, Vigilance and Enforcement, Telangana, realised his passion for swimming in 1998.
“When I joined the police department, I created a swimming record in 1998 which is still standing. It has not been broken even after 30 years in the National Police Academy,” says senior IPS officer Rajiv Trivedi, who created history by becoming the senior most and the fastest man to swim across the Palk Strait in 2011.
He adds, “When I was 40 years old, I got a chance to swim from England to France in 2001, across the English Channel for nearly 13 hours in the freezing water. I swam for 40 kilometre.”
“The same year, I swam in the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain to Morocco. I crossed it in 5 hours 28 minutes,” he adds. He believes that his ability to handle water allowed him to enter a reservoir full of crocodiles during the Grey Hound team ambush in Orissa. “It was my endurance that I could retrieve each of my Grey Hound personnel’s body in 15 days,” he says.
According to him, one needs to be passionate about at least one thing in life. “I get attracted to anything that improves endurance and tests my stamina and mental capacity, like running a marathon. At 50, I became the third fastest marathoner in the Mumbai Marathon in the veteran category, completing 44 kms in three hours and 19 minutes.” To promote cashless transactions in the state, Trivedi pedalled along with his two sons, all the way from Hyderabad to Karimnagar recently. He took five hours to cover the 160 kms to reach Karimnagar.
