The Hindu : Sport : Khade sparkles on opening day

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 11, 2007
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Khade sparkles on opening day

S. Sabanayakan

Richa Mishra stamps her class in the freestyle and butterfly events

— Photo: R. Ragu

FREE FLOWING: Richa Mishra of Delhi, who clinched the women's 200m freestyle gold.

GUWAHATI: Veerdhaval Khade was the toast of the opening day of the aquatics event of the 33rd National Games at the Dr. Zakir Hussain Complex here on Saturday. The 15-year-old from Kolhapur in Maharashtra won two gold medals and a relay bronze and also set a record to set the tone for the rest of the competition.

The class X student of St. Xavier lives and trains in Bangalore at the K.C.

Reddy Swimming Centre run by Nihar Amin. Khade, who is 6 feet 2 inch tall, annihilated a quality field in the 200m race to clock a new Games' mark of 1:54.18 to obliterate the previous record of 1:58.68 which was set in 1997 by Abhijith J. from Karnataka. Silver medallist Rohit R. Havaldar of Karnataka also broke the old mark.

Exceptional rise

Khade's rise has been exceptional since 2005 when he won the 50m freestyle, 200m freestyle and 4x100m freestyle relay competitions in the Asian age-group championships at Bangkok. He followed it up with three more at the South Asian Federation Games where he won the 100m, 200m freestyle events and the 50m butterfly.

"I am extremely happy to win the first gold medal at the National Games,'' said the debutant after the 200m freestyle event. Khade, who idolises Ian Thorpe of Australia and Alexander Popov of Russia, said he was competing more against his own timings rather than his opponents. Khade has already represented India at the Asian Games at Doha and in the Asian championship.

Khade's second gold medal effort just fell short of the record. He clocked 57.99s as against Akbar Ali Mir's record of 57.38s for the gold medal in the 100m butterfly. Later, he lifted his team from the sixth place to third in the 4x100m freestyle relay to end a very satisfying day. Khade said that he would be hoping to seal a place in the next Olympics by performing in the Melbourne world championship in March.

Comfortable winner

If Khade was the day's hero, Delhi's Richa Mishra refused to be left behind by stamping her class in winning the 200m freestyle and 100m butterfly events. Pitted against Karnataka swimmers, Richa won the freestyle event rather comfortably. Lekha Kamath of Karnataka gave her a tough fight in the butterfly event but Richa recovered in the last 50m to win.

The Karnataka contingent, beaten by the brilliance of two individuals, came into its own in the relay by taking both the 4 x 100m events to end the day with two gold medals. The men's quartet of Aniketh D'Souza, Rohit R.

Havaldar, Rehan Poncha and Sandeep N.A. established a new Games' record with a time of 3:39.43s thus bettering the previous mark of 3:41.99s set by Kerala in 1997.

The results:

Men: 200m freestyle: 1. V. Khade (Mah) 1:54.18s-New Games Record (Previous Games Record-Abhijith J. (Kar), 1997, 1:58.68s), 2. R.R. Havaldar (Kar) 1:57.13, 3. R. Poncha (Kar) 1:59.16. 100m butterfly: 1. V. Khade (Mah) 57.99s, 2. R. Poncha (Kar) 59.05, 3. S. Srinivas (Kar) 1:00.01. 4 x 100m freestyle relay: 1. Karnataka (A. D'Souza, R.R. Havaldar, R. Poncha, Sandeep N.A.) 3:39.43s-NGR (PGR-Ker, 1997, 3:41.99s), 2. Services 3:43.10, 3. Maharashtra 3:48.77.

Women: 200m freestyle: 1. R. Mishra (Del) 2:12.83s, 2. P.R. Alva (Kar) 2: 15.24, 3. S. Tipre (Mah) 2:16.21. 100m butterfly: 1. R. Mishra 1:05.93, 2. L. Kamath (Mah) 01:06.69, 3. P.R. Alva (Kar) 1:06.71. 4 x 100m relay: 1. Karnataka (S. Tandon, K. Mahajan, M. Giri, P.R. Alva) 4:18.58, 2. Maharashtra 4:22.61, 3. Kerala 4:25.37.

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