Khade, Richa launch gold rush

RANCHI: Virdhawal Khade and Risha Mishra launched their gold-rush at the 34th National Games in dramatic fashion by rewriting records in their two individual swims on Sunday. In fact, all but one event on the opening day at the Beer Budhu Bhagat Aquatics Stadium produced new meet marks.
Had their teammates maintained the pace, Khade and Richa would have made it three-out-of-three but the relay gold medals went elsewhere.
Hosts Jharkhand got off to a golden start too when Sonam Rajput and K. Srilakshmi, two women who have their roots outside the state, won titles in taekwondo. With two silver and two bronze medals to boot, and some good results from the football and hockey pitches, the buzz around the city was understandable.
Khade, who is competing in a whopping nine individual events in addition to three relays, gave the competition just the right start in front of an enthusiastic crowd by bettering the mark he had set at the previous Games by stopping the clock at 1 minute, 53.91 seconds in the 200 freestyle. "I surprised myself with that fast time because the plan was to go a bit slow on the 200 and go flat out in the remaining two races," the Maharshtra swimmer was to say at the end of the day.
Within half-an-hour he was back to knock off Bengal star Akbar Ali Mir's 2002 mark in the 100 butterfly with a time of 55.56. Ironically, Bengal too had their moment in the event when Sumanta Nath clinched bronze for their first medal since Mir's feat.
Richa too led from start to finish in her events, stopping the clock at 2:09.53 in the 200 crawl' to better Shikha Tandon's record of 2002 and then at 1:04.41 to improve upun her own timing of 2002.
Left to do too much in the last leg, Khade had to settle for silver in the 4x100 freestyle after Services disqualification took third-finishers Maharashtra a slot up. Richa actually went without a medal in the women's event with Delhi finishing way behind.
In volleyball, the big guns boomed and the hosts learnt the hard way that this was a different ball game. Their teams came up against respective national champions and were dispatched in straight sets, the Tamil Nadu men and Kerala women going on the rampage.
In other matches, Kerala men crushed Punjab and the Karnataka women turned the heat on against Himachal Pradesh.