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Indian swimmer Siva Sridhar grabbed all the attention with a prominent seven gold and two silver medal-winning performances at the ongoing Khelo India University Games 2021 (KIUG) on Thursday (April 28).
The Jain University continues to dominate the overall medals tally with 24 of them, including 16 gold, five silver, and three bronze medals. The swimming competitions concluded with Jain University winning 14 gold medals across the competition.
Following his gold medal-winning performance at the Khelo India University Games, Siva Sridhar now intends to make the 2022 Asian Games cut in the 100m backstroke category.
Siva, whose personal best timing is 57.6 seconds, needs to better his performance to get past the 55.8s barrier to qualify for the mega-event. The 2022 Asian Games are slated to take place in Hangzhou, China, between September 10 and 25, later this year.
Speaking about the same, Siva said:
"My personal best is 57.6 and I really want to represent India in the 100m backstroke, along with Srihari Nataraj, who has already qualified. This is my target for the year. Today's performance has given me the confidence to work on the 200 IM event as well and I will look to make the cut (2:02.09 is the A qualifying time) in this event too for the Asian Games."
Srihari Nataraj wins 3 gold medals at Khelo India University Games 2021
Olympian Srihari Nataraj grabbed three gold medals to help Jain University hold on to the top spot in the medals tally.
Nataraj, representing Jain University, won the 100m freestyle, 50m backstroke, and 4x200m freestyle relay, setting new KIUG records in all the events.
Nataraj won the 100m freestyle in 50.98 seconds, bettering the 53.01 seconds mark set by Rudransh Mishra in the 2020 edition. In the 50m backstroke, the young swimmer clinched gold after finishing the race in 26.10 seconds. Meanwhile, Siva Sridhar (Jain University) bagged a silver medal in 27.10 seconds.
Nataraj, along with Sanjay Jayakrishnan, Siva Sridhar, and Raj Relekar, then went on to bag the 4x200m freestyle relay gold for Jain University with a new record timing of 8:06.87 seconds.
