Desinghu makes big splash, creates junior national record in 100m freestyle

Dhinidhi Desinghu of Karnataka came up with a sensational effort in the 100m freestyle for Group II girls to register a junior national record at the 39th Sub-junior and 49th Junior National Aquatic Championships 2023 here on Thursday.

The 13-year-old, who trains at Dolphin Aquatics under coach Madhu Kumar BM, clocked 57.67s to erase Maana Patel’s record of 59.12s set in 2014.

Desinghu, with her powerful strokes, was nearly 10m ahead of Sri Charani Tumu of Karnataka (1:02.55s).

ALSO READ | World Aquatics to debut ‘open category’ races for transgender swimmers in Berlin

Her national record was only a fraction of a second slower than the best Indian time of 57.3s that stands in the name of Kenisha Gupta.

In another race, Ishaan Mehra of Karnataka clocked 1:00.64s to rewrite the national record in 100m freestyle for Group II boys.

He bettered Suhas Pretham’s record of 1:01.29 sec set in 2022. Finishing behind Ishaan was Vedanta Madhir also of Karnataka. He clocked 1:01.98 sec to bag the silver medal.

Jananjoy Jyoti Hazarika of Assam won the gold medal in 50m butterfly. He looked at ease, sprinting ahead of Maharashtra’s Salil Prashant Bhagwat, to finish first clocking 25.12s while Bhagwat clocked 25.94 sec.