Swimmer Kenisha Gupta bags gold in 50m freestyle, clocks personal best
Tashkent, Apr 16 (PTI) Mumbai swimmer Kenisha Gupta clocked her personal best timing to win a gold medal in the women’s 50m freestyle event at the the Uzbekistan Open Championship here on Friday.
Kenisha, who is a part of the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) development group, clocked 26.61s to grab her third gold medal of the tournament.
She had finished first in the 100m and 200m freestyle events earlier this week.
The tournament, which is FINA accredited Olympic qualifier, is the first international meet for almost all Indian swimmers since the coronavirus-forced lockdown in March last year.
Sajan Prakash and Srihari Nataraj, who have already achieved the Olympics ‘B’ mark in their respective events, were vying for the ‘A’ cut for the Tokyo Games in this meet.
Both the swimmers improved on their timings but the A mark eluded them.
Sajan (200m butterfly) fell short of the ‘A’ mark by 1.37s and Srihari (100m backstroke) missed it by 0.22s.
While a ‘B’ mark means the swimmer will receive an invitation to the event if the total available quota places are not filled up, an ‘A’ standard ensures an automatic berth to line up at the Tokyo Olympics.
Apart from Sajan and Srihari, four other Indian swimmers have achieved the B standard.
No Indian has till date achieved the ‘A’ cut.