Courtesy: Swimming Federation of India
Haryana’s Divya Satija set the pool ablaze with her nippy strokes to rewrite the National Record in 50m butterfly at the 73rd Glenmark Aquatic Championship in Bhopal at the Prakash Tarun Pushkar on Monday.
The 23-year-old Haryana swimmer was in hot form as she raced off the blocks the quickest and managed to hold on to her slender lead to win the race in 28.33 seconds, obliterating the previous mark of 28.64 seconds set by her at 2017 meet at the same venue.
Though Karnataka’s Nina Venkatesh pushed the senior pro till the very end, she had to be satisfied with a silver medal, touching the pad in 28.43 seconds. Maharashtra’s Jyotsna Pansare was third in 28.74 seconds.
Satija, a trainee at the Dolphin Aquatics in Bengaluru was not surprised by her feat, and in fact, was expected to dip the mark at the meet. “Not surprised with my performance. In fact, I was expecting this. I have been training towards this for a while now. I had clocked the meet record at this pool two years back, so that was always in the back of my mind,” she said.
“I have been in this range for a while now. In the past three races, I clocked 28.72 seconds. Every time I would take the dip, the aim was to better the time, but it just didn’t work. But fortunately, today in the morning heats I managed 28.71 seconds and that was a big relief. On the face of it, it might just be 0.01 seconds, but that helped me a lot. It gave me the confidence that I could go faster.”
In the men’s 50m butterfly, Maharashtra’s Virdhawal Khade continued his dominance on the meet with another gold in record time. The 28-year-old clocked 24.26 seconds for the gold, bettering his previous mark of 24.26 seconds set at the Thiruvananthapuram last year.
Meanwhile, his wife Rujuta too made the most her return to competitive swimming to clinch the 50m freestyle title in 26.72 seconds. It’s the first time that a husband-wife duo swept an event at the Senior Nationals.
Later in the evening, Karnataka’s quartet of Srihari Nataraj, Likith SP, Rakshit Shetty, Prithvi M combined well to hand their side a gold in the 4x100m medley relay, setting a new meet record in the process. They clocked 3:48.83, obliterating the previous best of 3:48.95 set by the Railways at the Ranchi meet in 2016.
Results:
Men:
400m medley: Siva S (Kar) 4:33.01, 1; T Emil Robin Singh (Railways) 4:36.68, 2; Jayant M (Services) 4:41.21, 3.
200m breaststroke: Likith SP (Kar) 2:18.61, 1; Danush S (TN) 2:19.11, 2; M Lohith (Railways) 2:19.94, 3.
50m butterfly: Virdhawal Khade (Mah) 24.19, (NMR, OR: Virdhawal Khade 24.26, Thiruvananthapuram, 2018) 1; Supriya Mondal (Railways) 24.55, 2; Mihir Ambre (Mah) 24.78.
4x100m medley relay: Karnataka 3:48.83 (NMR, OR: RSPB 3:48.95, Ranchi, 2016), 1; SSCB 3:52.11, 2; RSPB 3:52.93, 3.
Women:
1500m freestyle: Richa Mishra (Pol) 17:55.55, 1; Bhavika Dugar (TN) 17:57.67, 2; Khushi Dinesh (Kar) 17:58.14, 3.
200m breaststroke: Apeksha Fernandes (Mah) 2:41.89, 1; Saloni Dalal (Kar) 2:42.50, 2; Jyoti Patil (Mah) 2:42.76, 3.
50m butterfly: Divya Satija (Har) 28.33 (NR, OR: Divya Satija, 28.64, Bhopal 2017), 1; Nina Venkatesh (Kar) 28.43, 2; Jyotsna Pansare (Mah) 28.74, 3.
50m freestyle: Rujuta Khade (Mah) 26.72, 1; Kenisha Gupta (Mah) 26.90, 2; Avantika Chavan (Railways) 27.39, 3.
4x100m medley relay: Maharashtra 4:33.10, 1; Karnataka 4:34.84, 2; Tamil Nadu 4:39.49, 3.
Does it count with the Indian testing lab losing accreditation?
Very nice & enjoyable to see reports of swimmers from developing countries swim-wise. Thank you SwimSwam.
Nippy strokes? Someone needs to explain this to me.
My guess is that was picked straight out of an Indian press release. They use pretty traditional British-English, and nippy means quick here, so my guess would be high turnover.