Star Indian swimmer Srihari Nataraj once again stood tall, bagging a bronze in the 100m freestyle to extend his personal haul to five medals at the 11th Asian Aquatics Championships on Tuesday.
Also making his mark was Rohit B Benedicton, who claimed a silver in the men’s 50m butterfly, taking India’s overall medal tally to nine.
Drawn in lane five, Srihari paced his race smartly. He turned third at the 50m mark with China’s Haoyu Wang (49.19) and Qatar’s Ali Tamer Hassan (49.46) ahead, while Akash Mani (50.45) was close on his heels in fourth.
In the second lap, Srihari dug in, maintaining his rhythm to hold off the chasing pack and secure bronze in 49.96 seconds.
“I’ve had a good season this year and I think training has been going really well.
I was fast in the heats and with the way my training has been, I thought I’d be much faster here.
“But these guys swam a brilliant race as well and I’m just glad I got my hand on the wall to be on the podium,” Srihari said after the final.
“The energy is amazing. Usually in swimming, you can’t hear anything while racing, but in the last 50m of the relay yesterday, I don’t know who it was, I could hear so much, just screams cheering us on the whole time. It’s a great feeling,” he added.
In the men’s 50m butterfly, Rohit started well and went on to clinch the silver medal with a time of 23.89, closely losing out to Kazakhstan’s Adilbek Mussin, who finished first with 23.74.
Meanwhile, Dhinidhi Desinghu and Shashidhara Rujula booked places in the women’s 100m freestyle final but couldn’t break through the top half of the field, finishing sixth and eighth respectively.
(With inputs from PTI)
