Another record for Vritti
After 800m, Hyderabad swimmer sets new mark in 1500m freestyle
Telangana’s Vritti Agarwal bagged her second gold in record time when she swam to victory in the women’s 1500 metres freestyle event at the Khelo India Youth Games on Sunday.
Vritti, a student of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Hyderabad, had earlier captured gold in 800m freestyle. Vritti is 16 years old at trains at the Zionsportz Swimming Academy.
In the 1500 metres final at the War Heroes Swimming Complex in Ambala, Haryana, Vritti clocked 18 minutes and 1.45 seconds, which was a new Khelo India record. The old record was 18:31:58 set by V. Varsha of Tamil Nadu in 2020. Shirin of Karnataka took silver in
18:04.49. She was followed by statemate Ashwmita Chandra, who finished in
18:29.23.
Hyderabad boxer Mohammed Billal, a 12th class student of Azam College, Charminar, stormed into the Boys 51kg final, defeating Kavi of Chandigarh with a 4-1 verdict. This was Billal’s maiden appearance in the Khelo India Games.
Meanwhile, Kundareu Venkatadri of Andhra Pradesh, a product of Volga Archery Academy in Vijayawada, cornered glory in the Boys Compound archery by clinching the gold. This is his third medal in the KIYG.
In the Girls compound event, 12-year-old Madala Surya Hamsini from Bhimavaram took the centrestage with a bronze medal effort.
Mummana Anjani Kumar continued his good run in the Boys 67 kg category in boxing. The 18year-old Visakhapatnam boy outplayed Vikas Kumar (Punjab) to storm into the final.
Meanwhile, after being neck and neck from Day 1, hosts Haryana and defending champions Maharashtra will fittingly
battle it out one last time on Monday, hoping to annex the overall championship.
On the penultimate day too, both collected five gold medals each to maintain the status quo of the last couple of days, with Maharashtra holding a solitary gold advantage.
At the time of writing, Maharashtra had 42 gold,
35 silver and 30 bronze while Haryana had 41 gold,
35 silver and 42 bronze.
This includes the mallakhamb pole gold won by Maharashtra that is yet to reflect in the official medals tally.
Haryana will, however, enter the final day with utmost confidence as 20 gold are up for grabs in boxing. They have as many as 12 boxers in the finals while Maharashtra have only four.
They are also in both the handball finals and would fancy at least one gold. The
boys are up against Delhi and their girls against Himachal Pradesh.
Maharashtra too are in both the kho-kho finals and are expected to take these gold. Neither Haryana nor Maha are in the other finals, the two basketball matches and the Boys table tennis and football summit clashes.
The day started with archers Riddhi (girls recurve) from Haryana and Maharashtra’s Aditi
Swami (girls compound) opening the gold medal account for their respective states.
Swimmer Apeksha Fernandes grabbed two gold medals in 200m butterfly and 50m breaststroke and table tennis star Diya Chitale defeated Delhi’s Lakshita Narang 43 in the Girls singles final and Rishabh Ghubde added a gold for Maharashtra in boys pole mallakhamb.