Bula Choudhury

Bula Choudhury (born 2 January 1970 in Hugli, India) is an Indian former swimmer. She is an Arjuna awardee, Padma Shri awardee, former India national women's swimming champion and elected as MLA from 2006 to 2011 representing Nandanpur in West Bengal state of India.

Swimming career Her first national competition, at age nine, she dominated her age group by winning six gold medals in six events. She continued to improve, winning various junior and national championships, as well as six gold medals at the 1991 South Asian Federation Games. She went to her first nationals, at the age of 12, which is an all-time record. This also guaranteed her a place in the relay quartet for the Brisbane Commonwealth Games as well as a prominent place on the list of Asiad probables.

In 1984 she set a national 100m butterfly record of 1:06.19 sec. During the Seoul Asian Games in 1986, she created a record of 1:05.27 sec in 100m butterfly and another record of 2:19.60 sec in 200m butterfly. Choudhury started long-distance swimming in 1989 and crossed the English Channel that year. She won the 81-km (50- mile) Murshidabad Long Distance Swim in 1996, and in 1999 she crossed the English Channel again. In August 2004, she set this record by swimming across the Palk Straits from Talaimannar in Sri Lanka to Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu in nearly 14 hours.