National records, in any sport, are the best performances by a country's athletes anywhere, but not for the Swimming Federation of India (SFI). For years together, the sport's national body has stubbornly hung on to its theory that the national records are timings set at National championships and maintains another list for 'Indian best performance records'.
But it does not provide the Indian best performances for events, at the National senior championships, on the day's startlist, only giving the national meet records. When one asked for the best Indian performance list, an hour before the start of the opening session of the finals on Saturday, the SFI officials were almost caught by surprise.
Only then, they began updating the new records that had been set at the recent World senior and junior championships before giving a printout to this correspondent.
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Surprisingly, many 'Indian best performances' clocked even at last year's Thiruvananthapuram Nationals, including Sajan Prakash's 2:05.83 in the 200m medley, do not find a place in the list. Rehan Poncha's 2:05.89 clocked in 2009 is the Indian best performance in the event as per the SFI 2019 list.
Tamil Nadu's A.V. Jayaveena also pointed out that the women's 50m breaststroke time in the SFI's Indian best performance list was wrong.
“I had done 33.76s at the Khelo India Games in January (in Pune),” Jayaveena told Sportstar after winning the breaststroke sprint gold.
The best Indian performance in the women's 50m breaststroke, according to SFI list, is Delhi's Priyanka Priyadharshini's 34.29s clocked in 2012.
And the meet record in the event, as per the startlist, is Jayaveena's 33.81s clocked on September 19, 2018.
That was the period the senior Nationals were held in Thiruvananthapuram. But Jayaveena did not even win the gold last year, it was Karnataka's Saloni Dalal who had taken the 50m breaststroke title in 34.56s with the Tamil Nadu girl clocking 34.59 for silver.
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