Road to Paris: Fordham Has Helped Launch Nepal’s Alexander Shah to Second Games
The road to the Olympics takes swimmers from all over the world through the American college system. From far and wide, countries big and small, a litany of colleges can contribute to the 800 or so Olympic swimmers that’ll converge on Paris this summer. In the months until that happens, we’re shining a light on the journeys of some of those swimmers in a series of stories on The Road To Paris.
Nepal is never far from Alexander Shah’s mind when he races. He means that literally, sporting a national team cap under his Fordham racing dome.
Shah will get the chance this summer to represent his country at a second Olympics in Paris. He was unsure he’d get there until qualifying via the 2024 World Aquatics Champions in Doha. And after the unusual experience of Tokyo three years ago, it’s an opportunity on a global stage to show how he and Nepalese swimming has grown.
“I’m always looking to try to represent Nepal,” Shah said recently, “and I know that I’m doing that whenever I’m racing here at Fordham or racing across the world.”
The journey has taken Shah to New York, where he’s a junior in the Bronx. His sister, Sofia Shah, swam internationally and came to the United States for college, first at William & Mary, then Pepperdine. Alexander knew he couldn’t follow her to Malibu, since the Waves lack a men’s program.
“She was a huge influence for me, especially as I started swimming at the end of middle school and in high school,” Alexander Shah said. “I looked up to her with that, and she helped pave the path to the U.S. and college swimming and helped me do a lot of research and reach out to schools. I would say without her help and what she’s done, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
Alexander Shah; Photo Courtesy: John Mooney/Fordham Athletics
He narrowed his college search down to the main coastal cities for ease of travel back home. It ended up being New York, where he has family upstate and where he’s found “quite a large” Nepalese community in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens.
“I haven’t felt out of place,” Shah said. “I don’t mind traveling. I like to travel a lot, and being in a new environment is fun for me. I’ve only had good times.”
Things have changed greatly for Shah and for swimming access in Nepal since he was in middle school. Then, as Sofia’s international journey inspired him to delve deeper, the capital of Kathmandu had only a few accessible pools of even 25 meters. Most were unheated and open seasonally. He bounced around facilities to get in practice time, sometimes in pools shorter than 25 meters.
That would change, but only with bigger developments in the country. The 2015 earthquake was an inflection point in the lives of many Nepalese. The April 25 tremblor registered a 7.8 on the Richter scale and set off weeks of aftershocks. Nearly 9,000 people died, more than 21,000 were injured and entire villages were leveled. The cost climbed into the billions of dollars.
“That was definitely a really traumatizing experience, living through it,” said Shah, who was 12 at the time. “We lost some family as well. I was quite young, so it was a lot more traumatizing than it is now. I look back on that quite a lot and it’s something that means a lot from me, coming from that and experiencing that and being able to represent the struggles the country has been able to go through and still come back.”
Rebuilding included an expansion of swimming facilities as a side effect. Shah’s high school, the Lincoln School, built a pool when he was a freshman, which cut down his travel time. His team back home totaled some 30 people, from ages 10 to 18, much smaller than just Fordham’s varsity.
The training worked for Shah. His first international meet came at the 2017 World Junior Championships in Indianapolis, also his first trip to the U.S. Two years later, he swam at both the 2019 World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea, and at the South Asian Games in Kathmandu.
Shah, who holds national records in the 50 and 100 free, earned his way to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the only male in Nepal’s five-athlete delegation. He finished 59th in the 100 free and was one of the nation’s flagbearers at the Opening Ceremonies.
His path to Paris was still laborious. A fellow Lincoln School alum and friend, Nasir Yahya Hussain, outswam him at the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka. Hussain was 46th in the 400 free and 59th in the 200 free, collecting more FINA points than Shah, who was 68th in the 50 free and 81st in the 100.
Both entered Doha understanding it would be the final selector for Paris. Shah matched his national record by going 23.79 in the 50 free, placing 58th. He set a best time in the 100 free of 52.17, tying for 62nd and trimming nearly eight tenths off his national record.
“Going into this meet, neither of us had any idea what was going to happen,” he said. “I know he’s been improving a lot and so was I. So I had no assurances if I was going to come out of Doha with that spot or not. I think that made it really interesting and really fun. Compared to Tokyo, when I was pretty confident I would get that spot, I would say this time, it depended on how either one of us were feeling on that day. I took all that experience from the last two years and applied it to the swim, and it worked out perfectly on that day.”
Shah’s experience at Fordham loomed large. He spoke glowingly of working with the Rams’ new coach, Olympic medalist Tom Wilkens.
His experience in Tokyo, like so many of his peers’, was clouded by COVID-19 restrictions, from their training camp in Tokushima to the time in Tokyo. He’s looking forward to more latitude to explore this time around and hoping it translates to performance.
Shah knows after his time in America that he’s a much different swimmer this time around. A different Olympic experience would match that.
“How I swim now and how I react to how I train is very different,” Shah said. “I’d say it’s also better. I have a much better understanding of the things I need to do.”