India's Chahat Arora wins gold at Thailand Age Group Swimming Championship

Indian swimmer Chahat Arora won gold medal in the women’s 50m breaststroke event at the Thailand Age Group Championship. The Chandigarh swimmer, who won two gold medals at the nationals last year, won the yellow metal after equalling her own previous best Indian time of 33.62 seconds in Samut Prakan, Thailand. The 24-year-old swimmer had won two gold medals in the Uzbekistan Open Swimming Championships in April last year. In other results, top Indian swimmer Srihari Nataraj finished third in the ‘B’ final of the 200m backstroke event at the French Elite Open Swimming Championship. The 21-year-old swimmer stopped the clock at 02:04.10 in the heats to finish 18 out of 36 swimmers and qualify for the ‘B’ final in Limoges, France. However, in the final, he bettered his time by over 0.8 seconds to 2:03.27 to finish third on Friday night. Mumbai swimmer Kenisha Gupta clocked 57:61 for a fourth place finish in the women’s 100m freestyle ‘C’ final. She had clocked 57.96 in the heats. The top eight swimmers advance to the ‘A’ final. The country’s junior swimmers continued to make a splash in South Africa. Vritti Agarwal and Nina Venkatesh won a silver and bronze medal respectively in the South Africa National Championships. Vritti clocked a personal best time of 18:06.40 to grab the silver in the junior girl’s 1500m 15-16 years freestyle event. Nina won the bronze in the 50m butterfly finals with an effort of 29.03 in Port Elizabeth. The two are a part of the 16-member Indian junior team participating at the South Africa nationals. The junior squad also had undergone a training exposure camp with the South African junior swimmers in March.