Indians picked up five gold and three silver in a total of 10 medals on the second day of the Uzbekistan Open Swimming Championships in Tashkent on Wednesday.
Sajan Prakash and Kenisha Gupta claimed their second gold each by winning the men and women’s 200m Freestyle finals while Chahat Arora (50m Breastrstoke), Divya Satija (50m Butterfly) and Suvana C Baskar (200m Backstroke) also minted gold. S Danush (50m Breaststroke) and Tanish Mathew George (200m Freestyle) emulated Kenisha Gupta in clocking personal best times.
For all that, it was the 200m Freestyle finals that caught the eye. Sajan Prakash put behind the disappointment of missing out on the Olympic Qualifying Time in the 200m Butterfly event on Tuesday, clocking 1:50.74 to win gold. It was only his second fastest time over the distance behind the 1:50.35 that he clocked in the National Championships on September 19, 2018.
The 17-year-old Tanish George Mathew drew from Sajan Prakash’s pace and rustled up his personal best time 1:52.57 with a bronze medal to boot. His previous best time of 1:53.03 came in the Latvian Open on February 27 this year. He is, however, still some distance away from registering an Olympic Selection Time (B standard) that is set at 1:50.23.
The women’s race featured Shivani Kataria who, going into the race, owned the eight fastest times by an Indian against 18-year-old Kenisha Gupta whose best had not put her in the Indian top 10 over the distance. But the Mumbaikar gave further evidence of his rising stature in Indian swimming by clocking the sixth best time by an Indian. 2:06.66 with a start-to-finish effort.
The 23-year-old Shivani Kataria, who beat Kenisha Gupta when they squared up for the first time over the distance in the SFI National Championships in 2019 and more recently in the Karnataka State Championships in Bengaluru last month, finished a distant second in 2:10.23. Shivani Kataria had won bronze medal in the 100m Freestyle on Tuesday.
SP Likhit, who skipped the National Camp to train on his own, showed he remains India’s best breaststroker by claiming the 50m silver medal in a time of 28.19 seconds ahead of his challenger S Danush, whose 29.25 was a personal best and fetched him the bronze medal. Danush’s previous best was 29.31 when he won the SFI All-India Invitational Meet in Bengaluru late last month.
Chahat Arora won the women’s 50m breaststroke final in 33.80 seconds, one-tenths of a second shy of her National Record time attained in Thailand Age Group Swimming Championships in Bangkok on October 25 last year. She had a 33.88 performance in the Karnataka State Championships that was held in the midst of the National Camp in Bengaluru.
Suvana C Baskar clocked 2:24.78 to win the women’s 200m Backstroke gold while Divya Satija’s 50m Butterfly gold came in 28.74 seconds and D Adhithya’s silver medal in the 50m Butterfly came in 25.16 seconds.
The Indian contingent’s focus on Thursday will be on Srihari Nataraj who is bidding fair to secure an Olympic Qualifying Time (53.85). His personal best time of 54.69 seconds was achieved in the FINA World Junior Championships in Budapest on August 20, 2019. In his only competitive race this season, he clocked 55.37 seconds in the Karnataka State Championships last month.
Image: Sajan Prakash (Courtesy: Sajan Prakash Facebook Page)
