BHOPAL, 13 July 2007 — Sixteen-year-old Virdhawal Khade of Maharashtra, who is the only swimmer from India to have qualified for next year’s Olympics to be held in Beijing, set the pool ablaze when he set two National records on the first day of the junior National Aquatic Championship at the Prakash Taran Pushkar here.
As many as seven new national records were set as Maharashtra almost matched Karnataka on the opening day of the championship.
Maharashtra swimmers struck five gold medals while Karnataka had six to their credit Tamil Nadu and Bengal won two each while backstroke specialist Fariha Zaman gave Assam its first gold medal.
Khade opened the day by rewriting 200m freestyle record in the boys’ Group I category. Khade, who set the pace in the heats, clocked 1 minute 58.12 seconds to win the event as Poorna Chandra (2:02.27) of Karnataka came second. Karnataka’s Rohit Hawadar held the old record of 1:59.74.
Khade also won the 50m butterfly stroke event with 26.27 seconds. He erased his own record of 26.50 that was set last year. In the girls’ Group I, Lekha Kamath set a new National mark of 29.55 seconds in the 50m butterfly stroke.
Akash Rohit of Karnataka proved his mettle by setting a new national record in the boys’ 100m breaststroke category. He broke the national record of Prem Kumar of Manipur. He completed the event in 1:13:94 minutes. Kailash of Maharashtra and Anjani Kumar of Uttar Pradesh came second and third in the category respectively.
The other gold medallist for Karnataka included Sandeep N (50m backstroke)in boys’ category and Aratha Magavi (50m butterfly) in girls’ category.
