Advait Page broke the men’s 1500m national record by nearly 20 seconds as he won the gold in the 14th Singapore National swimming championships in Singapore on Friday.
The youngster, from Madhya Pradesh, clocked an Indian best time of 15:25.98s which broke the previous record of 15:45.83 set by Kerala’s Sajan Prakash in 2014.
It also helped him go past the Swimming Federation of India’s qualification standard for the coming Asian Games (15:33.21, sixth place of 2014 Incheon Asiad).
“That was absolutely spectacular, many of the swimmers are coming up with awesome timings,” prominent swimming coach Nihar Ameen, the Dronacharya awardee, told The Hindu from Singapore on Friday evening.
Advait had broken the 800m national record earlier with a time of 8:10.22s. Meanwhile National record holder Virdhawal Khade won the men’s 100m freestyle gold in 50.26s and in the process defeated the host Singapore’s Joseph Schooling, the Rio Olympics champion. Schooling was third with 50.49s.
Later, Karnataka’s Arvind Mani bettered the men’s 100m back stroke national record while finishing third with 56.38s (previous 57.95s). However, he narrowly failed to make the cut for the Asiad (qual. time 56.35).
Sandeep Sejwal, the national record holder, had won the silver in the men’s 100m breast stroke on Thursday in 1:02.33s. Sejwal had won the 50m breast stroke bronze medal at the Incheon Asiad.