Richa bags 4th gold; Saurabh, Khade set new national records

Richa clinched the women's 400m freestyle title, edging out Karnataka rival Surabhi Tipre in a close finish and finished the race in 4 minutes, 29.17 seconds to retain the crown. It was her fourth gold of the five-day championship but her time was well off her own year-old mark of 4:25.76.

In the men's section, favourites Khade, bronze winner at the Guangzhou Asian Games two years ago, and Sangvekar set new national marks in the 100m butterfly and 400m freestyle events respectively while swimming their way to gold medals.

Khade, who hails from Kolhapur, easily outpaced his rivals and touched the pad well ahead of silver winner Sajan Prakash of Railways in 54.92 seconds, an improvement on Rehan Poncha's 100m butterfly mark of 55.17 set up three years ago.

Sangvekar dipped under four minutes and set a new national record of 3:58.62 to retain the 400m freestyle title, bettering his own one-year-old mark of 4:01.35.

New records were also set by the men's and women's 4x200m freestyle relay teams representing Karnataka and Maharashtra, respectively.

There was an upset in the men's 50m backstroke when holder Aaron Agnel D'Souza, a member of Karnataka's relay quartet, was beaten to the gold by Tamil Nadu's M B Balakrishnan, who had set a new mark of 27.16 in the heats.

The Tamil Nadu swimmer clocked 27.24 in the final while finishing just ahead of D'Souza, who clocked 27.77.

Balakrishnan had broken D'Souza's old national record of 27.23 in the heats. (More)