Rony, Sonia march on
Shahjahan Ali Rony established himself as the country's top breaststroke swimmer yesterday when he completed a double at the Mercantile Bank 23rd National Swimming Championships.
Rony, who bagged the men's 100m title on Thursday in record timing, set a new national record in the 50m event on the third day of the competition at the National Swimming Complex in Mirpur.
The 21-year-old also holds the SA Games record in this event, having won the 50m gold in 30.43s at the 10th SA Games in Colombo in 2006.
Bangladesh Army swimmer Rony, who was barred from the 2007 nationals, took 30.13s to break the 2003 national record of 30.96s set by Karar Samedul Islam of Bangladesh Navy, who had to settle for bronze in 32.43s yesterday.
Fellow Army swimmer Kamal Hossain (31.66s) won silver.
Although the third day's timings were recorded manually as well as on electronic scoreboard, the Bangladesh Swimming Federation (BFS) published results in hand-timings.
"We have installed the electronic scoreboard but it is not fully workable. It is still showing some error," informed a federation timekeeper.
Rony, who competed in spite of suffering from jaundice (he has been tested positive for hepatitis B), has yet to decide whether he would go for a third breaststroke gold today or not by participating in the 200m.
Sonia Akhter was back to her best as the Class VII student of BKSP claimed a couple, taking her tally to five gold in three days. The teenager, who had won six gold medals last year, has already bagged seven medals including two silvers in this year's championships.
Having set three new national marks on the first two days, Sonia broke last year's own 50m butterfly record in 32.65s. The old record was 33.06s.
Sonia and her BKSP teammates won the 4x200m freestyle relay also in record time, finishing in 10:15.63s to put the 10:32.72s old record behind them. Bangladesh Ansar and Kushtia won silver and bronze respectively.
Navy's ace swimmers Jewel Ahmed and Rubel Rana also two gold medals each. Rubel won his third individual gold of the meet winning the 200m backstroke before lifting the men's 4x200m relay along with Nazrul, Munmum and Jewel.
After a subdued start, Jewel finally won his first individual gold of the competition when he beat BKSP's Anik Islam and fellow sailor Nazrul Islam for the 50m butterfly honours before joining the relay.
Mahfizur Rahman won his third gold of the meet in the men's 15000m freestyle while his teammate Seema Sultana won the women's 800m freestyle to keep BKSP atop the table with 11 gold, ten silver and eight bronze.
Bangladesh Army closely followed with a haul of 10-12-4 after they captured the water polo and all three diving gold medals.
Army won their seventh consecutive and overall 25th water polo gold with a 5-0 crushing of Navy, who lost their seventh final in a row. The diving gold medals went to Imran Hossain (5m platform), Zakaria Hossain (3m springboard) and Abul Kalam Azad (1m springboard).
Veterans Dolly Akhter and Sabura Khatun clinched the women's 50m breaststroke and 200m backstroke respectively to put Ansars at third place with 6-6-4, followed by Navy (5-3-6).
BSF president and Chief of Naval Staff Vice Admiral Sarwar Jahan Nizam will distribute medals as chief guest of the concluding ceremony of the four-day meet today.
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