Asian Age Group Swimming Championships | Indian quartet open with gold in men's relay
The Indian team of Srihari Nataraj, Anand Anilkumar, Sajan Prakash and Virdhawal Khade kicked off the Asian Age Group Swimming Championships with a yellow metal in the 4x100m men's freestyle relay on the opening day. The women’s team, however, managed to clinch a silver medal in the same event.
With numerous Olympics berths on the line, it was important that India started the competition on a positive note and the quartet ensured exactly the same. The Indian men’s relay team clocked 3:23.72 seconds to finish the 4x100m freestyle race, which was almost five seconds faster than Iran, who finished second with 3:28.46 seconds and Uzbekistan, clocking 3:30.59 seconds.
The first swimmer for India was Srihari who got off to a flying start by touching the pads at 50.68 seconds, as opposed to Iran’s 51.42 seconds by Sina Gholampour. This made the job easier for all the other three with Anand keeping up the lead before Sajan followed. Khade’s powerful strokes saw him clocking 50.39 seconds on the final 100m.
"It was important that the team got off to a good start. It was a great effort from all of us and it feels good to win India's first gold at the Championships," Srihari said, reported PTI.
In the women 4x100m freestyle relay for open category, the Indian team had Rujuta Khade (59.83s), Divya Satija (1:01.61s), Shivani Kataria (59.57s) and Maana Patel (59.75s), who finished second to win the silver medal with a total time of 4:00.76 seconds. The first and third places were taken by Thailand (3:54.29 seconds) and Hong Kong (4:08.64 seconds).
That wasn’t all, as India won the second silver of the day in the 4x100m freestyle relay for group II boys. The team comprised of Vedaant Madhavan (55.27s), Utkarsh Patil (57.10s), Sahil Laskar (54.83s) and Shoan Ganguly (54.29s), who clocked a total time of 3:41.49 seconds. Japan won the gold with 3:34.60 seconds while Chinese Taipei (3:42.29 seconds) clinched the bronze medal.
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