Wednesday 13 February 2008

Indians @ 2008 Zoggs Queensland Sprint Championships

Over the weekend an Indian contingent consisting of Virdhawal Khade (Veer), Sandeep Sejwal and Shikha Tandon - who are currently in Australia on a three month training stint - took part in their first competition in Australia - 2008 Zoggs Queensland Sprint Championships in Brisbane (9/Feb/2008 to 10/Feb/2008). This meet consisted of only 50m events of all the strokes for the following age-groups:
9yrs, 10yrs, 11yrs, 12yrs, 13yrs, 14yrs, 15yrs, 16yrs, 17/18yrs & Open

This is one of the many preparatory weekend meets they be swimming in lead up to the two Olympic qualifying meets -
2008 Telstra Australian Swimming Championships (at Sydney in the end of March; this meet is also the Australian Olympic trials) and 2008 Telstra Grand Prix 1 (at Canberra in the end of April)

On Day 1, Veer and Sandeep won a gold medal each in the 50m Butterfly (16yrs) and 50m Breaststroke (Open) with a time of 25.75sec and 30.16sec respectively. Shikha finished 11th in the 50m Backstroke semi-final with a time 32.68sec.

On Day 2, Veer continued to show good form winning two bronze medals. This is taking into consideration that he had to race eight times (as each Open event had Prelims, Semi-finals and Finals and Age-group event had Prelims and Finals).

Veer's first bronze medal came in the 50m Butterfly (Open) with a time of 25.83 and his second bronze medal came in the 50m Freestyle (16yrs) with a time of 24.08. Veer finished 5th in finals of the 50m Freestyle (Open).

Shikha finished 4th in finals of the 50m Freestyle (Open) with a time of 27.30sec and 13th in the semi-final of the 50m Butterfly (Open) with a time of 30.71sec.

Note: The times are not indicative of their current standards as Veer, Sandeep and Shikha are in the middle of high volume endurance training and they did not rest for this meet.

Click here for the full results.

Click here for the photos.

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