Maharashtra clinch 15 medals in National Aquatic Championship

Srihari Nataraj of Karnataka who won the Individual Championships at the Junior Nationals earlier in Pune added the Best Swimmer award of the 71st Glenmark Senior National Championships winning 4 golds 1 silver and 3 New Meet records. He has also qualified for the Youth Olympics to be held in Buenos Aires in November 2018. He edged Sajjan Prakash who won 5 golds and had 2 meet records. Shivani Kataria won the best swimmer for women with 4 golds and 2 new records.

The overall championship in swimming was won by Karnataka with a total score of 238 points. The Men’s Championships was won by Railways with a total score of 139 points while the Women’s Championship was won by Karnataka with a total score of 133 points. A total of 12 records were created during the meet. The Diving Championship was won by Services with 34 points in the Men’s section and by Railways in the Women’s section with a total of 31 points.

In water polo Maharashtra and Railways won the gold in the Women’s and Men’s section respectively while Police and Services won the silver. Current National record holder Saurabh Sangvekar from Railways won the 800 m Freestyle race leading the event for the most part with a time of 8:23.84. Local boy Advait Page swim a wonderful las 100m to beat the challenge of A S Anand and Kushagra Rawat of the SGTIDM program in Delhi to win silver with a time of 8:25.93 to win his 4th medal of the meet. A S Anand of Services won bronze with a time of 8:26.76.

Shivani Kataria of Haryana won the best swimmer as she swam a fabulous last 50m to beat Karnataka’s Malavika V to win gold in the 400 m Freestyle with a time of 4:28.29, Malavika won the silver and her fourth individual medal of the event with a time of 4:28.51. 15-year-old Khushi Dinesh of Karnataka won bronze and her fifth medal with a time of 4:36.59.

Sajan Prakash of Kerala lead from start to finish in his favourite 200 m Butterfly to win his 5th gold of the event with a new record time of 1:59.12 which is the best time by an Indian in this event. Supriyo Mondal of RSPB won silver with a time of 2:02.91 and bronze was won by Karnataka’s Avinash Mani with a time of 2:03.27