The Hindu : Sport / Swimming : Sait, Patil set National records

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 09, 2004

Sport

Sport - Swimming

Sait, Patil set National records

By Rakesh Rao

NEW DELHI, OCT. 8. Saba Sait proved that she is more than just a pretty face. Twice on Friday, the Chennai girl set the pace unmatched by her challengers to come up with improved National records in the 50-metre breaststroke in the National aquatic championship at the Talkatora pool here.

Before Saba completed a `double', Viraj Patil claimed his second gold in diving by improving his National record in the three-metre springboard event.

Amar Muralidharan was instrumental in the making of two meet records. He set the 200m freestyle mark after having anchored the Police team to a fresh record in the 4x100 medley relay in the morning.

In fact, for the second successive day, Police stayed ahead of Karnataka in the gold-medal count but trailed in terms of points earned in the race to claim the overall team honours. After four days of competition, Police has 13 gold medals to Karnataka's seven.

But the day surely belonged to Saba. This first-year B. Com student from Chennai's Stella Maris provided a perfect finish to her day's work in the last event of the evening. She chased her record of 0:36:03 set in the heats this morning and became the first Indian ever to go sub-36. Saba's time of 0:35.63 seconds was a huge improvement over her previous meet record of 0:37:05 seconds set at Thrissur in 2002.

The results: Men: 200m freestyle: 1. Amar Muralidharan (Pol) 1:58.03 (NMR, old 1:58.58 by T.A. Sujith in 2002); 2. Rehan Poncha (Kar) 1:59.15; 3. Akbar Ali Mir (Rlys) 1:59.69.

200m ind. medley: Arjun Muralidharan (Pol) 2:12.49; 2. Rehan Poncha (Kar) 2:12.70; 3. Akbar Ali Mir (Rlys) 2:14.88.

4x100m medley relay: 1. Police (T. K. Senthil Kumar, Deepak Kumar, Arjun Muralidharan and Amar Muralidharan) 4:06.46 (NMR, old 4:06.51 by Police in 1998); 2. Railways (Dipesh Bairagi, K. Rajiv, Gairik Bardhan and Akbar Ali Mir) 4:09.40; 3. Services (M. Rehman, V. N. B. Kumar, S. Ratheesh and T. A. Sujith) 4:11.63.

Women: 200m freestyle: 1. Charu Mishra (Pol) 2:16.31; 2. Pooja R. Alva (Kar) 2:17.23; 3. M. Kshipra (Kar) 2:17.36.

100m backstroke: 1. Shikha Tandon (Kar) 1:07.69; 2. Sumi Cyriac (Rlys) 1:12.28; 3. M. Vaishnavi (Kar) 1:13.64.

50m breaststroke: 1. Saba Sait (TN) 0:35.63 (NR, old 36.03 (H) by Saba Sait in 2004); 2. Madhura Patil (Mah) 0:36.66; 3. M. Mini (Ker) 0:36.72.

200m ind. medley: 1. Richa Mishra (Pol) 2:29.16; 2. Rishu Mehra (Pol) 2:33.58; 3. D. Mrudula (Kar) Kar) 2:36.69.

Men's 3m springboard: 1. Viraj Patil (Mah) 574.40 points (NR, 567.65 by Viraj Patil in 1997); 2. G. B. Sarath (Ser) 509.75; 3. M. Manesh Kumar (Ser) 502.35).

Waterpolo: Men: Services bt Delhi 6-4; Railways drew with Bengal 6-6; Manipur drew with Karnataka 5-5; Maharashtra bt Kerala 10-5. Women: Police bt Karnataka 4-1.

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