Advait Page and Srihari Nataraj take out 1500 free, 100 back Indian records

Within 1 day in a row Advait page and Srihari Nataraj won the Indian men’s 1500 freestyle and 100 back records. Page delivered a 15: 23.66 in the 1500 freestyle at the 2021 Fran Crippen Swim Meet of Champions in Mission Viejo, USA, while Nataraj lowered the mark from 100 backs to 53.90 at the 2021 Settecolli Trophy.

1500 freestyle

In Mission Viejo, Advait Page swam to victory in the men’s 1500 freestyle with a 15: 23.66 to shave off almost 2 seconds Kushagra Rawat‘s previous mark of 15: 25.22 he set at the NSW State Championships in Sydney, Australia in March 2020. The swim for Page was a 6-second improvement over his start time at 16: 29.54.

Page also won gold at the Fran Crippen Swim Meet of Champions 2021 with a lead of almost 30 seconds and was thus ahead Vuk Celicis 15: 52.60 for second place and Aryan Nehra156: 58.19 for third place.

Page competed for India at the 2019 World Swimming Championships and only registered in the men’s 800 freestyle and finished 29th overall with 8: 10.35.

100 backs

At the Settecolli Trophy 2021 in Rome, Italy, Srihari Nataraj raced to a silver medal in the men’s 100 with a score of 53.90, making him the first Indian to crack 54 seconds. His swimming record was an improvement on his own previous record of 54.07, which he set earlier this year at the Uzbekistan Open Championships 2021 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. At that meeting, Nataraj also broke the Indian men’s 50 back record with 25.11.

Nataraj has raced for India several times, including the 2018 Commonwealth Games, the 2019 World Championships and the 2019 Junior World Swimming Championships. Most recently, Nataraj delivered a 54.45 gold medal in the 100 backstroke at the Belgrade Trophy 2021 in Serbia. Nataraj also holds the Indian men’s 200 back record of 2: 01.70, which he set at the 2019 Junior World Championships.

While Nataraj’s 53.90 Indian record was slower than the 53.85 FINA-A standard within 0.05 seconds, Indian could still potentially include him in their 2021 Olympic roster as he was below the 55.47 FINA -B-cut lay.