Arjun Muralidharan and Richa Mishra bag Best Swimmers titles

Bangalore, Sep 25 (UNI) Police Swimmers Arjun Muralidharan and Richa Mishra bagged five golds each to claim the best swimmer titles at the LIC 60th Senior National Aquatic Championship which concluded here today.

Arjun who broke records in all the five events he won, rounded up the championship clocking a new timing in the 100 m Butter fly improving upon his own previous mark by 0.44 secs. Richa had a field day today winning three events -- 200 m Individual Medley, 100 m Free Style and 100 m Butterfly. She created a new record in Individual Medley, erasing a three year old record of Shivaranjani of Karnataka with a timing of two min 25.17 secs.

Karnataka as anticipated retained the overall team Championship as also the team titles for Men and Women.

Arjun swam the 100 m Butterfly in 56.54 seconds, with his previous best being 56.98 secs made two years ago.

The concluding day saw four records shattered. The other two were by Rehan Ponacha of Karnataka who swam to a new timing in 200 m Individual Medley and Veerdhaval Khade (Maharashtra) rewriting the record in 100 m Free Style. Ponacha clocked two min 10.88 seconds (old: two min 12.29 secs was created by Akbar Ali Mir of Railways in 2003), while Khade won his event as also his fourth gold in 52.20 secs with the previous best being 53.51 by T S Sujit of Services made in 2003.

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