48th Junior National Aquatic Championships: Swimmers Apeksha and Hashika smash national records

Bhubaneswar: A total of 26 new records were established at the 48th Junior National Aquatic Championships that concluded today at the Biju Patnaik Swimming Pool situated inside the iconic Kalinga Stadium, here.

The final day of the proceedings saw recording-breaking effort from Hashika Ramachandra of Karnataka who eclipsed the national record in 400m medley for group II girls by clocking 5:10.70. The Karnataka lass bettered the previous record of 5:13.80 held by Apeksha Fernandes of Maharashtra. Sri Nithya Sagi of Telangana and Raghvi Ramanujan of Maharashtra finished second and third in this event with a time of 5:26.33 and 5:27.49 respectively.

Maharashtra’s Apeksha Fernandes, meanwhile, continued to remain in dominant form as she created a new national record in the 200m breast stroke for girl’s group II. She clocked an impressive time of 2:40.36 secs to improve the previous record of 2:43.01 held by Saloni Dalal created in 2017. Apeksha finished well ahead of S Lakshya and Saanvi S Rao, both of Karnataka. While Lakshya clocked 2:45.03 to take the silver, Saanvi timed 2:46.49 to settle for the bronze.

Another record of the day came in the 400m medley for girls group I. Shakthi S of Tamil Nadu smashed Sayani’s Gosh’s record of 5:15.04 clocked in 2016. Shakthi touched the pads on 5:11.77 seconds to create the new record and also win the gold medal. She beat Delhi’s Bavya Sachdeva (5:14.87) and Karnataka’s A Jedidah (5:22.81).

The Best Swimmer awards for group I boys’ went to Utkarsh Patil of Karnataka as well as Devansh Parmar of Gujarat as both amassed a total of 3 gold medals and 1 silver. In group II boys, the individual award went to Navaneeth Gowda of Karnataka who bagged 5 gold medals.

In the girls group I, Maharashtra’s Apeksha took home the Best Swimmer award having won 5 gold medals and creating 5 new national records. Hashika Ramachandra of Karnataka was declared the Best Swimmer as she won 4 gold, 1 silver with 4 new national records. Karnataka won the overall championships with total of 623 points.

In waterpolo, Bengal were the champions in boy’s category while Kerala won the title in girl’s category.

–IANS