Puttur: After a series of national level swimming achievements including a record, ace swimmer from Puttur Aquatic Club, Vaishnav Hedge wins the Gold medal for India in 50 meter Breast-stroke at the South Asian Aquatic Championship (SAAC). The SAAC swim championship held in Colombo on Wednesday, 19 October had top swimmers competing from SAARC nations.
Vaishnav clocked 29.31 seconds to clinch the Gold. Second was Jashandeep Singh of India who clocked 29.60 and third was Kiran Jayasinghe from Sri Lanka. Vaishnav qualified for this event by winning Silver in the 70th Glenmark National Swimming Championship held at Ranchi last month.
Vaishnav is also the youngest among only 10 swimmers from India who met the qualifying standards for Asian Swimming Championship to be held in Tokyo in November. He will be swimming with the likes of Dmitri Balandin who is the Gold medalist from 2016 Rio Olympics in 200m Breastroke.
Vaishnav is an 18 year old first year degree student at St. Philomena College. He trains with Puttur Aquatic Club in Balavana swimming pool under the coaching of Partha Varanashi, Niroop G R and Vasanth Kumar. He also trains at Muliya Diamond Fitness in Puttur with Naveen K and his dietician Shona.
Among the swimmers who have the highest FINA points (world swimmer ranking system), Vaishnav stands third in India with 766 points for his 50 meter Breast-stroke at the National Championship. He obtained this by clocking 29.14 in the heats. Olympian Sandeep Sejwal (830 FINA points) and Olympian Sajan Prakash (815 FINA points) stand before Vaishnav at the first and second positions.
In the pictures, Vaishnav Hegde (center) is seen with his gold medal along with Jashandeep Singh of India and Kiran Jayasinghe of Sri Lanka at Colombo.
