Veerdhaval Khade scores a record brace

Bangalore, Sep 22 (UNI) Five records were shattered in the eight events decided on the second day of the LIC 60th Senior National Aquatic championship here today, with budding swimmer Veerdhaval Khade of Maharashtra recording a brace, clipping the timings in 200 m freestyle and 50 m butterfly.

While all the four men's events saw new timings, Richa Mishra of Police accounted for the lone record-shattering performance in the women's section, winning the 400 m individual medley. The other two records in the men's section were through Rehan Poncha of Karnataka, who bettered the 400 m individual medley, and Karnaaka team eclipsing the record timing in 200 metre freestyle relay.

Fresh from his Sri Lanka SAF Games performance, Khade plunged into the pool for his first gold in 200 m freestyle, in which he improved upon his previous record with a new timing of 1 min 56.03 seconds. His previous best was one min 57.32 secs. Later, he completed a record double, winning the 50 m butterfly at 26.10 secs.

The previous record of 26.27 secs was created by K Rajeev of Kerala in 2003. Rajeev finished third today.

Rehan Poncha swam to a new timing of four min 38.55 seconds in the 400 m individual medley, improving upon his own previous best of 04:40.37 achieved last year. Host team Karnataka erased the old record in 4 X 200 m freestyle relay with a timing of 08:08.32 seconds, thus erasing the record held by Railway (08:08.57).

In the women's section, Richa Mishra of Police bettered her own record by finishing 400 m individual medley with a timing of 05:07:13 seconds against her earlier record timing 05:08:57 seconds.

A beaming 15-year-old Khade said this was a better performance and he was happy with it. Khade had won all the six events he participated in in the recently-concluded SAF Games by winning three golds and three silvers.

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