THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, NOV 14: Though the opposition was feeble to push her up, Nisha Millet swam against clock to set a new national record in her favourite 100 metre freestyle race on the penultimate day of the 52nd National Aquatic Championship held at Water Works Swimming Pool here today.The 15-year-old tenth standard student of Sophia High School was off the blocks in a flash and hit the front in the first 20 metres, leaving teammate Darshana Rajaram gasping for breath. From then on Nisha swam alone increasing the pace in the last 30 metres to finish in a new time of 1.00.45 seconds. Darsha Rajaram came a distant second. This was Nisha's eighth gold medal of the meet. In the morning she had anchored Karnataka to an easy win in 4x100 metre freestyle relay.Nisha golden splash notwithstanding, the rest of the day's programme saw favourites winning without much fuss. Sebastian Xavier extended his lease on 100 freestyle with a domineering win today. Sebastian was first to hit the water and took lead with powerful strokes.Youngster Elvis Ali Hazarika, swimming in the adjacent lane, kept abreast with Xavier in the first 50 metres. But the good start enabled Sebastian maintain a good half-a-body length lead over Elvis at the turn. With Sebastian coasting ahead, the battle was on for minor placing. IC Raju and Shibu Sebastian caught up with Elvis and the last 40 metres witnessed a keen tussle between the three. Raju moved up with sudden burst of speed, pushing Elvis and Shibu to the third and fourth spots respectively. Sebastain, who timed 54.31 seconds for gold, fell well short of his meet mark of 53.65 seconds.Meghana Narayan won the newly introduced 50 metre butterfly quite easily. But hot favourite TK SenthilKumar of Kerala was pushed to the brim by Delhi's Sandeep Kakkar. Infact till the end it was anybody's race but Senthil's patent good start put in good stead as he touched the walls a bit early than Sandeep. Senthil clocked 0.28.36 seconds against Sandeep's 0.28.37 seconds. This was Senthil's third gold medal of the meet.Railway's Taranath Hait avenged his defeat against Umesh Prasad in the three metre springboard dive, by winning the one metre springboard today with 421 points. Umesh came second with 419 points. At the end of sixth day, Karnataka were ahead with 187 points followed by Kerala (147)and Police (120 points).
