Virdhawal Khade primed himself for another crack in an Asian Games Swimming competition even as Aryan Nehra, Maana Patel, Nina Venkatesh and AK Linyesha were busy rewriting National Records on the opening day of the 76th National Aquatics Championships in the Swimming Pool at the GMC Balayogi Sports Complex in Hyderabad on Sunday.
The 31-year-old from Maharashtra, a 50m Butterfly bronze medalist in the 2010 Asian Games and missed 50m Freestyle bronze in the 2018 Asian Games, clocked 24.33 seconds to win the 50m Butterfly ahead of Benedicton Rohit (Tamil Nadu) and team-mate Mihir Ambre. For someone who has taken to coaching youngsters in Mumbai, it was his ninth fastest swim in the event and inside the Asian Games qualifying time of 24.35 seconds. It will be his fifth Asian Games.
Gujarat’s Aryan Nehra, 19, found the pace needed for the National Record in the men’s 400m Freestyle with 3:52.55 in a gripping race featuring Adviat Page (Madhya Pradesh), Aneesh S Gowda (Karnataka) and Delhi’s Kushagra Rawat who had set the National mark in Australia last year. However, Aryan Nehra finished a shade outside the Asian Games qualifying mark (3:51.67).
Maana Patel was the other swimmer who went the closest to securing the Asian Games berth on Sunday. Needing to clock 1:02.12 – the time of the sixth place in the last edition in Jakarta – the 23-year-old touched home in 1:03.48. It was an improvement on her own National Record set in Mare Norstrum Meeting in Canet-en-Roussillon, France, last year.
Karnataka’s Nina Venkatesh, 18, was over a second away from the Asian Games qualifying mark but became the first Indian woman to swim the 50m Butterfly inside 28 seconds. She beat a strong field including Rujuta Khade (Maharashtra), 15-year-old team-mate Manavi Verma, Meet Record holder Divya Satija (Haryana) and National Record holder Apeksha Fernandes (Maharashtra).
The results (finals):
Men
400m Freestyle: 1. Aryan Nehra (Gujarat) 3:52.55 (New National & Meet Records. Old NR: 3:53.45, Kushagra Rawat, Australia, 2022; Old MR: 3:53.68, Kushagra Rawat, Bengaluru, 2021); 2. Advait Page (Madhya Pradesh) 3:55.45; 3. Devansh Parmar (Gujarat) 3:57.86.
100m Backstroke: 1. Sahil Laskar (Services) 57.34 seconds: 2. Utkarsh Patil (Karnataka) 57.66; 3. Rishabh Das (Maharashtra) 58.19.
200m Breaststroke: 1. Danush Suresh (Tamil Nadu) 2:20.43; 2. M Lohith (Railways) 2:21.70; 3. Manikanta Lakshman (Karnataka) 2:22.59.
50m Butterfly: 1. Virdhawal Khade (Maharashtra) 24.33 seconds; 2. Benedicton Rohit (Tamil Nadu) 24.62; 3. Mihir Ambre (Maharashtra) 24.78.
4x200m Freestyle Relay: 1. Karnataka (Shoan Ganguly, Shivank Vishwanath, Tanish George Mathew, Aneesh S Gowda) 7:38.39; 2. Gujarat 7:45.25; 3. Services 7:48.54.
Women
400m Freestyle: 1. Bhavya Sachdeva (Delhi) 4:28.65; 2. Aanya Wala (Maharashtra) 4:30.14; 3. Vritti Aggarwal (Telangana) 4:33.33.
100m Backstroke: 1. Maana Patel (Gujarat) 1:03.48 (New National & Meet Record. Old NR: 1:03.69, Maana Patel, Monaco, 2022; Old MR: 1:04.33, Maana Patel, Thiruvananthapuram, 2018); 2. Palak Joshi (Maharashtra) 1:04.32; 3. Suvana C Baskar (Karnataka) 1:05.00.
200m Breaststroke: 1. AK Lineyesha (Karnataka) 2:37.35 (New National & Meet Records. Old NR: 2:40.38, Apeksha Fernandes, Bengaluru, 2019; Old MR: 2:39.38, AK Lineyesha, Guwahati, 2022); 2. S Lakshya (Karnataka) 2:41.13; 3. Venika Pariksh (Gujarat) 2:43.41.
50m Butterfly: 1. Nina Venkatesh (Karnataka) 27.74 seconds (New National & Meet Records. Old: 28.01, Nina Venkatesh, Hyderabad, 2023); 2. Rujuta Khade (Maharashtra) 28.06; 3. Manavi Varma (Karnataka) 28.31. (In the heats, Nina Venkatesh broke Divya Satija’s National Record of 28.27 set in Bengaluru in 2019 and her Meet Record of 28.33 set in Bengaluru in 2019).
Note: The Swimming Federation of India calls the National Records as Best Indian Performances and the National Championship records as the National Records. However, the results above follow the conventional pattern of terming the best performance by an Indian as the National Record and the best performance in the National Championships as the Meet Record. The National Records have been sources from the FINA website.
Photo: Courtesy Virdhawal Khade Instagram page
