He began his swimming at the age of seven. His first attempt was at a district level swimming contest known as the "Ribbon Meet". It is called a ribbon meet is because the top 6 out of the 8 district level finalists get a ribbon. In that contest, he got sixth position and a ribbon. He took part in many district and state-level contests. At the age of 10, he took part in 5 km swimming competition in the sea. Though the youngest participant, he managed to get fourth place and this event was a stepping stone in his swimming career in 1991.
Palk Strait and English Channel swim (1994)
In 1994, his next swimming expedition was to surpass Mihir Sen's record of completing five channels in a calendar year, a record that was unbroken for over 30 years. He first swam across the Palk Strait, which lies between Tamil Nadu, India and Sri Lanka in April 1994 at the age of 12. After completing Palk, he went on to cross the English Channel on 15 August 1994. He swam across the Rottnest Channel in Australia, the Straits of Messina at Italy, and the Zannone Circeo at Italy. Finally, he crossed the Ten Degree Channel on 30 December 1994. Thus, he swam across the six channels, all in 1994, and his feat is included in the Guinness Book of World Records.
1995–1998
After setting the record, he took part in competitions all over the world. Between 1995 and 1998, he was the only participant from Asia of the 25 swimmers selected from across the world for the World Series in Swimming. He represented India in more than six competitions around the world and won medals for India, which includes the 1st prize in Switzerland. He was awarded the Arjuna Award by the Indian Government for bringing laurels to the country and for the Guinness record in 1996. He was retired permanently from swimming in 1998.
Education and career
Kutral holds an engineering degree from the College of Engineering, Guindy at Chennai, a masters from the University of Texas at Dallas, and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He started his career as a hardware engineer with the Intel Corporation and transitioned to Citibank as an Investment Banker. In 1998, he made a conscious decision to retire early from professional swimming, as private corporate sponsors were nonexistent. The Tamil Nadu State government sponsored and provided holistic support for his entire Guinness record contributing swims and the Indian Government sponsored one of this International competitions. He is an inspiration for many youngsters in India.
