Rio 2016 Olympics: 13-year-old swimmer wins backstroke heat, while 41-year-old shines in gymnastics

Singh won her 100m backstroke heat at the age of 13 years and 255 days - while at the other end of the spectrum was Uzbekistani Chusovitina, who first took part in the Games at Barcelona in 1992.

At the time of her first games, she represented the Unified Team that came out of the collapse of the USSR, winning team gold.

FULL STORY: Age just a number for Chusovitina]

She then represented her native Uzbekistan until 2006, after which she moved to Germany so as to be able to get cancer treatment for her son, Alisher. She repaid her new nation with a silver medal in the vault at Beijing 2008.

As of 2013, she began representing Uzbekistan once again - a quite incredible sequence for an elite athlete, and one which continued on Sunday as she took part in the preliminary competition at Rio.

For Singh things are very different: the youngest of more than 10,000 athletes taking part in the Games, pre-race nerves were understandable.

To make things more stressful still, the London-based schoolgirl was unable to bring her regular coach, Rhys Gormley, to Rio, and had to confer with him by mobile phone on how to deal with the mishap. '

'He's been texting me and sending me instructions,'' Singh explained to reporters during a round of interviews with the world's press. ''Before my race I ripped my suit so I had to ask him whether or not I should change it. I was trying to pull it up and my nail went through the suit.''

After switching to a different costume, she finished first of three swimmers in her heat, though with no chance of progressing further against an elite field in the women's 100 metres backstroke.

''It was amazing just looking up on that board and seeing my time,'' she said. Singh came to England at the age of two but discovered after taking up swimming that she was fast enough to represent her native country.

Last year she was in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, on the fifth floor of a building, and was forced to shelter under a table when the Himalayan country was hit by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed 9,000 people. ''I felt so grateful that I was able to survive that terrible earthquake. Just to be here and try and make my country proud is amazing,'' she said.