National Games: K’taka’s swimmers on cloud 9
Dehradun: Star swimmers Srihari Nataraj and Dhinidhi Desinghu ended their National Games campaigns with a whopping nine gold each as their state Karnataka’s overwhelming dominance at the pool reflected in its top placing on a day when there was not much movement in the medal tally.
Karnataka clinched four more gold on the concluding day of swimming competitions in Haldwani on Tuesday to run away with a whopping 22 yellow metals in total from the pool. The southern state cemented its position at the top with 28 gold, 12 silver, 13 bronze for a total haul of 53 medals, followed by Services with 40 (21 gold, 10 silver, 9 bronze).
Maharashtra (16 gold, 33 silver, 27 bronze), Tamil Nadu (11 gold, 16 silver, 16 bronze) and Manipur (11 gold, 10 silver, 5 bronze) rounded off the top five.
Hosts Uttarakhand bagged a gold in canoeing (women’s Slalom C1 event) through Rina Sen to lie at the 15th spot.
There was no medal event at the shooting range in Dehradun on Tuesday.
Desinghu, the 14-year-old swimming sensation, won the women’s 100m freestyle event with a Games record time of 57.34 seconds - bettering her own earlier mark of 57.87 seconds set in the 2023 Goa edition - while Nataraj took the men’s 100m freestyle title with a time of 50.65 seconds.
Desinghu and Nataraj, both Paris Olympians, later teamed up to help Karnataka win the mixed 4x100m medley gold with a time of 4 minutes and 3.91 seconds to end at the same number of gold medals.