Shivani Kataria sliced fractions off her own meet record and 34-year-old Richa Mishra made a ‘golden’ return to brighten up an otherwise dull opening evening of the National swimming championship here.
Notwithstanding a one-hour delay to the proceedings owing to a protracted inaugural function, favourite Sajan Prakash (200m freestyle), Asian Games bronze-medallist Sandeep Sejwal and Chahat Arora (both in 50m breaststroke) won as anticipated.
Shivani dominated the 200m freestyle field in 2:06.63 minutes to erase her previous record of 2:06.97, set in September last year at Ranchi
In 200m medley, Richa led for close to 175 metres before being seriously tested by Bengal’s Sayani Ghosh. But the experience of the National record holder proved decisive.
Before the freestyle relay golds went to Services men and Karnataka women, Aravind Mani brought Services its first gold ahead of Karnataka’s Srihari Nataraj and Maharashtra’s Neel Roy in the 200m medley.
In fact, Roy topped the 200m freestyle heats but skipped the final held earlier in the evening to give his best in the shorter medley.
Final results:
Men: 200m freestyle: 1. Sajan Prakash (Ker, 1:53.06), 2. Avinash Mani (Kar, 1:54.85), 3. A. S. Anand (Ser, 1:55.12).
50m breast stroke: 1. Sandeep Sejwal (Rlys, 28.44), 2. Punit Rana (Pol, 29.09), 3. Vaishnav Hegde (Kar, 29.72).
200m individual medley: 1. Aravind Mani (Ser, 2:09.09), 2. Srihari Nataraj (Kar, 2:10.15); 3. Neel Roy (Mah, 2:10.80).
4x100 freestyle relay: 1. Services (3:30.30), 2. Railways (3:30.33), 3. Punjab (3:34.79).
Women: 200m freestyle: 1. Shivani Kataria (Har, 2:06.63, NMR, old 2:06.97), 2. V. Malavika (Kar, 2:09.69), 3. Damini Gowda (Kar, 2:11.10).
50m breast stroke: 1. Chahat Arora (Pun, 34.39), 2. A.V. Jayaveena (TN, 34.77), 3. Annie Jain (MP, 35.01).
200m individual medley: 1. Richa Mishra (Pol, 2:28.47); 2. Sayani Ghosh (Ben, 2:28.69); 3. V.K. R. Meenakshi (TN, 2:30.32).
4x100 freestyle relay: 1. Karnataka (4:10.03), 2. Maharashtra (4:12.06), 3. Tamil Nadu (4:12.39).