Panaji, Oct 29: Tamil Nadu’s VK Elakkiyadasan and SS Sneha of Karnataka were crowned the fastest male and female athletes of the 37th National Games after they clinched their respective 100m race gold medals here on Sunday.
Elakkiyadasan finished with a timing of 10.36s ahead of Pranav Gurav of Maharashtra who clocked 10.41s. Services’ Saurabh Rajesh won the bronze with a timing of 10.45s.
Sneha crossed the finish line with a timing of 11.45s ahead of the experienced Srabani Nanda of Odisha. R Giridharani of Tamil Nadu won the bronze with a timing of 11.58 sec.
Maharashtra became the first contingent to cross the 100-medal mark.
New records set at
aquatics events
Five Games records were broken on the opening day of swimming competition with Karnataka’s Srihari Natraj winning two gold medals.
Olympian Srihari was the first to lower the Games mark on Sunday with a timing of 1:49.09s in 200m freestyle, pushing Kerala’s Sajan Prakash (1:51.10) to second spot while Aneesh Gowda of Karnataka finished third with a time of 1:52.18s.
Srihari then bagged his second gold in the 4×100 relay with the Karnataka team, also comprising Gowda, Sambhavv R and Prithvi M, clocking a time of 3:26.88s.
Tamil Nadu (3:28.46) and Maharashtra (3:28.72) won the silver and bronze respectively.
Prakash was the only one to stop the Karnataka juggernaut winning the men’s 100m butterfly with a new National Games mark.
Prakash, who had won five gold, two silver and a bronze in the last National Games in Gujarat, clocked 53.79s to finish ahead of Maharashtra’s Mihir Ambre (54.32s) and B Benedicton Rohit (55.00) of Tamil Nadu.
In the women’s section, Karnataka’s Nina Venkatesh also bettered the Games mark, clocking 1:02.22 sec in the 100m butterfly.
Astha Choudhary of Assam clinched the silver medal with a time of 1:04.21 and Shristy Upadhaya (1:04.24s) of Odisha took home the bronze.
Goa better their
best-ever performance
The inclusion of pencak silat in the National Games has helped Goa showcase their best-ever performance in the multi-sport event. Goa secured a gold and eight bronze medals on the final day of pencak silat competitions.
Goa won a total of one gold, one silver and 14 bronze medals from pencak silat, taking their total tally of medals to 26, which is 17 more than what the state managed to secure in the previous edition.
Maharashtra topped the standings in pencak silat to bolster their medals tally. (PTI)
