Seventeen-year-old Srihari Nataraj improved on his national record twice in a day but failed to qualify for the men’s 100m backstroke final on the opening day of swimming competition in the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast of Thursday.
Srihari first clocked a time of 56.71 seconds in the heats to qualify as the 15th fastest swimmer for the semifinals.
In the semi-finals later in the day, he improved his timing to 56.65 seconds to finished overall 10th among 16 swimmers and could not qualify for the finals.
Among the other Indians, 2010 Asian Games bronze medallist Virdhawal Khade also made it to the semifinals of the 50m butterfly event in which he clocked a timing of 24.50 seconds to finish 15th.
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