Women swimmers bag five golds

Islamabad:

Indian women swimmers continued the good work done by their male counterparts by making a clean sweep of all five gold medals setting two new meet marks on the first day of the women swimming events of the ninth SAF Games today. However, there were not many people to witness their exploits as the tournament organizing committee had barred male coaches, journalists and spectators from viewing the events due to restrictions because of religious considerations. Sivarajani hogged the limelight by grabbing the gold medal in 400m freestyle with a new meet record of 4 min 36.08 secs bettering the old mark set by Nisha Millet (4:38.29) set in Kathmandu in 1999. Another record was set by Sumi Cyriac in the 100m backstroke event when she timed one min 10.16 seconds to erase the old mark of 1:11.07 set by Deepika Chanmugam of Sri Lanka in 1991 at Colombo. The 100m breaststroke gold medal went to Bhavana Sharma of India with her compatriot MMrudula Dhanraj claiming silver. (PTI)