National Aquatics: Aaron shines as four marks are sunk

Four national records were broken as Karnataka's Aaron Agnel D'Souza clinched three gold medals and ace swimmer Richa Mishra added one, taking her tally to four, in the 65th Senior National Aquatic Championships in Ranchi, on Friday.

D'Souza, who on Thursday won the 200 metre freestyle gold, erased Tamil Nadu swimmer M B Balakrishnan's 2010 mark of 00:27:46s, clocking 00:27:23 in the 50 metre backstroke.

Putting up another good performance in the 100 metres butterfly, D'Souza clinched gold, clocking 00:56:02s.

"I did back-to-back two events and the competition was stiff. I am happy that I won both the events," the 19-year-old D'Souza said.

Seventeen-year-old Saurabh Sangvekar (04:01:35s) of Karnataka broke the 400 metres men's freestyle record, surpassing the previous best, set by Police team's Mandar Divese's 04:02:20s in 2009.

Divese settled for silver, clocking 04:05:34s, while Gujarat's Sujay Shah took bronze in 04:09:55s.

Sangvekar and D'Souza later combined with Rohit Havaldar and Rehan Poncha to erase the national record in the 4x200 metre freestyle relay, pushing the RSPB's quartet of Sarma S P Nair, G Mohan, Praveen Tokas and Sajan Prakash to second spot.

The Karnataka relay team clocked 07:58:36s, wiping out its own record of 08:02:56s achieved last year.

SSCB's P S Madhu, Sojjo Joseph, Saneesh Gopal and M Shibu took the bronze medal, clocking 08:23:45s.

A confident Richa Mishra broke yet another record, this time in the women's 400 metres freestyle, erasing her own 2009 record of 04:28:97s, clocking 04:25:76s.

Assam's Fariha Zaman won the women's 50 metre backstroke in 00:32:13s, falling behind her own record of 00:31:22s, set in 2008.

Karnataka's Pooja R Alva pocketed her second gold, winning the women's 100 metres butterfly, clocking 01:04:20s.

Maharashtra's Aditi Dhumatkar (01:05:93) and Rujuta Bhatt (01:07:36) won silver and bronze medals respectively.