Richa Mishra sinks two more marks
Ace swimmer Richa Mishra celebrated her 19th birthday in style, bagging two more gold medals with record timings, to take her individual tally to six even as records were eclipsed at regular intervals in the swimming events at the 32nd National Games in Hyderabad on Wednesday.
Karnataka's Shikha Tandon and Bengal's Akbar Ali Mir set the other two records as Richa, who is representing hosts Andhra Pradesh, stole the day's honours.
Richa, who had won the 400 metres freestyle and 50 metres butterfly on Monday, won gold medals in the 100 metres butterfly (1:05.22 seconds) and 800 metres freestyle (9:35.06 seconds) on Wednesday.
Shikha Tandon established a new mark in the 100 metres backstroke, clocking 1:07.03 seconds.
Akbar Ali Mir wrote his name in record books by winning his pet event, the 100 metres butterfly, in 00:57.38 seconds. He had earlier won the 50 metres butterfly gold, also in record time.
The fifth gold of the day was claimed by T K Senthil Kumar of Kerala, in the men's 200 metres backstroke event. He clocked 02:14.40 seconds.
Richa set the pool ablaze as she won the 100 metres butterfly event. In the process, she obliterated Meghana Narayan's mark of 01:06.12 seconds, set in 1997.
V Shivaranjani of Karnataka won the silver in 1:07.34 secs, while her statemate C Shubha (1:10.69 secs) took the bronze.
Richa, who has shifted base from Delhi, then won the 800 metres freestyle event, erasing the mark of 9:43.27 seconds, set by Nisha Millet of Karnataka, in 1997.
Shikha Tandon (9:46.76 sec) and V Shivaranjani (9:51.02 sec), both from Karnataka, won the silver and the bronze, respectively.
Earlier, Tandon won the 100 metres backstroke gold, eclipsing the record of defending champion Nisha Millet, who had to settle for the bronze. She clocked 1:11.33 seconds. She was unable to better her own record of 1:09.18 sec set at the Games in 1997. Kerala's Sony Cyriac took the silver in a time of 1:11.12 seconds.
The men's section, saw some aggressive swimming by Bengal's Akbar Ali Mir. He took off a little more than half-a-second to break Kerala's Suresh Kumar's record of 00:57.80 seconds, set in 1997.
Services' T A Sujith won the silver, clocking 00:58.44 seconds, while Karnataka's Sreesh Reddy (00:58.93 seconds) took the bronze.
In the men's 200 metres backstroke, Kerala's T K Senthil Kumar's effort erased the eight-year-old record of Delhi's Bhanu Sachdeva, who had clocked 2:12.56 seconds at the 1994 Games in Pune.
Karnataka's teen sensation Rehan Poncha took the silver, clocking 2:16.83 seconds, while Maharashtra's Siddharth Saini (2:21.28 seconds) settled for the bronze.
