File photo of Srihari Nataraj© X (formerly Twitter)
The impressive run of star swimmer Srihari Nataraj and Indian women’s team ended with sixth and seventh place finishes in the finals of men’s 100m backstroke and 4x100m freestyle relay respectively at the Asian Games on Sunday. Srihari, who had touched the pad at 54.71s to finish second in his heat and fifth overall to progress to the final, came up a timing of 54.48 seconds in the final. He was 2.25 behind gold medallist Xu Jiayu (52.23) of China. Irie Ryosuke of Japan (53.46) and Korea’s Lee Juho (53.54) won the silver and bronze medals respectively. The women’s team comprising Olympian Maana Patel, Dhinidhi Desinghu, Janvi Choudhary and Shivangi Sarma clocked 3:54:66 in the final to take the seventh place. China, Japan and Hong Kong won the gold, silver and bronze respectively.
(Asian Games 2023 medals tally | Asian Games 2023 Full Schedule)
Earlier in the day, the Indian quartet had produced a timing of 3:53.80s to finish sixth in the 10-team heat and make the final.
The other Indian swimmer in the fray, Utakarsh Patil finished with a time of 59.42s to sign off at 20th spot in the men’s 100m backstroke event.
Tanish George Matthew and Anil Kumar Shylaja failed to progress to the men’s 100m freestyle final, finishing 12th and 17th respectively.
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