Karnataka retains Senior National Aquatic Championships title

PTI, Sep 13, 2024, 8:37 PM IST

Representative image (Credit: Pexels)

Mangaluru: Karnataka men’s 4x100m freestyle quartet set a new meet record to help the state win the overall title at the 77th Senior National Aquatic Championships that concluded here on Friday.

Prithvi M, Kartikeyan Nair, Akash Mani and Srihari Nataraj combined to post 3 minute 28.09 second and better Karnataka’s own record of 3:28.16 set in 2023. Unni krishnan S, Vikkas Prabhakar, Vinayak Vijay and Anand A of Services finished second with 3:28.93.

The meet also witnessed Railways Shivangi Sarma, Astha Choudhury, Kanya Nayyar and Avantika Sudhir Chavan break Maharashtra’s earlier meet record of 4:02.24 in the women’s 4x100m freestyle created in 2023 by clocking 4:01.83.

Karnataka’s Shirin, Vihitha Nayana Loganathan, Shalini R Dixit and Hashika Ramachandra came second with 4:02.62.

Karnataka bagged 17 gold, 12 silver and 4 bronze to clinch the overall title. Maharashtra finished overall runner-up with 6 gold, 4 silver and 4 bronze medals.

Aneesh S Gowda of Karnataka was named the men’s individual champion with 4 gold medals while Hashika Ramachandra, also of Karnataka, claimed the top spot among women with 3 golds and 1 silver.

In the women’s 400m individual medley, Karnataka’s Thanya Shadakshar was marginally leading in the initial 100m of butterfly but Maharashtra’s Saanvi Deshwal pulled ahead of her in the next 100m backstroke.

Thanya made up some distance in breaststroke to come up alongside Saanvi and in the last 100m of freestyle put a significant distance between them. Thanya finished first with 5:08.10 while Saanvi came in second with 5:10.89.

Services’ Vinayak Vijay was leading the 400m individual medley in the first 100m butterly, accompanied by Dhulipudi Varshith of Telangana and Yug Chelani of Rajasthan.

Dhulipudi and Yug overtook Vinayak in the next 100m backstroke, but the former clawed his way back into contention in the breastroke. In the last 100m of freestyle, Yug Chelani and Andhra Pradesh’s Mongam Theerdhu Samadev turned the table to finish first and second with 4:36.39 and 4:36.44 respectively.

The women’s 200m backstroke saw Odisha’s Pratyasa Ray lead in the first 50m but Bengal’s Soubrity Mondal turned on the afterburners to snatch the lead and held it for the rest of the race to finish first with 2:21.76. Pratyasa finished second with 2:24.29.

In the men’s 200m backstroke, Tamil Nadu’s Nithik Nathella and Maharashtra’s Rishabh Anupam Das went neck to neck initially. But, Rishabh began pulling ahead halfway through the race but in the last 50m sprint Nithik overtook him and claimed first place, clocking 2:03.47. Rishabh finished second at 2:04.03.

Sharing his experience, Srihari Natraj said, “It was a great meet, coming back from the Olympics, it was a great chance to compete with friends. Karnataka put on a great show and retained the title again, I’m sure they would’ve won without me.”