Apeksha and Hashika smash natl records

Bhubaneswar: The final day at the 48th Junior National Aquatic Championships, where a as many as 26 new records were created, saw recording-breaking efforts from Hashika Ramachandra of Karnataka and Maharashtra’s Apeksha Fernandes at Biju Patnaik Swimming Pool situated inside Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday.
Hashika eclipsed the national record in 400m medley for group II girls by clocking 5:10.70. Sri Nithya Sagi of Telangana and Raghvi Ramanujan of Maharashtra finished second and third in this event with a time of 5:26.33 and 5:27.49 respectively.
Maharashtra’s Apeksha, meanwhile, continued her dominant form as she created a new national record in the 200m breast stroke for girl’s group II. She clocked an impressive time of 2:40.36 secs to improve the previous record of 2:43.01 held by Saloni Dalal created in 2017. Apeksha finished well ahead of S Lakshya and Saanvi S Rao, both of Karnataka.
Another record of the day came in the 400m medley for girls group I as Shakthi S of Tamil Nadu smashed Sayani Ghosh’s record of 5:15.04 clocked in 2016. Shakthi touched the pads on 5:11.77 seconds to create the new record and also win the gold medal. tnn