The 16-year old pre-university student from Mount Carmel College became the first India woman swimmer to go under one minute albeit in the 4x100 metres freestyle relay, the event in which she, along with sister Resume, her classmate Shikha Tandon and Abhinaya Shetty bettered the National record (4:14.77 created by Karnataka, 1996) by clocking 4:09.49 sec.

Reshma gave the hosts a flying start with a split of 1:03.23 while Shikha consolidated with a 1:02.28. Abhinaya did 1:03.30 in the third leg while Nisha completed the race with a blistering anchor leg in 59.69 sec. National coach K V Sharma confirmed that Nisha was the first to break the one-minute barrier and offered his congratulations to the youngster. However, Nisha was not completely satisfied. ``I am happy I could do it but I will be satisfied only if I do it in the 100 metres freestyle,'' she said.

Nisha had earlier overcome an atrocious start- she was the last to jump in - to emerge the fastest woman swimmer of the meet winning the 50M freestyle in 28.40 sec to add to the 200M freestyle and 50M backstroke titles for a golden treble. Nisha's younger sister, 13-year-old Reshma who was last in before Nisha finished second in 28.53 but was not happy with herself. Both sisters went all out but the poor start cost them dear. Stronger finishing by Nisha gave her the gold ahead of Reshma. Delhi's Richa Mishra came third in 29.32.

The Railway 4x100 relay quartet set a new meet record in one of the closest finishes in this edition over longer distances and Kailash Nath of Police rewrote the 1500 M meet record.

O K Jonson, Anthony Manimayil, I C Raju and Sebastian Xavier weathered an early challenge from Services quartet of T A Sujith, Benny Sebastian, Martin Joseph and Shibu Sebastian and Police foursome of Satish Kumar, Suraj Prakash, Elvis Hazarika and Hakimuddin. Anthony got the Railways a good lead which Raju and Xavier kept to win in 3:42.90 tobetter their own record of 3:43.28 set in 1995. Shibu Sebastian of Police drew level with Hakimuddin in the last leg but Hakim's finish was too powerful for shubi and Services slumped to third place in 3:44.53 behind Police (3:43.75).

Karnataka's Shikha Tandon picked up her second gold (200m breaststroke) with a good last lap swim. After Zeba wadia of Maharashtra set the pace, Shikha worked up a good lead after the 100 metres and held on to finish in 2:56.10. Zeba came second (2:58.67) while Karnataka's Archan Bhushan was third in 3:00.22.

Also winning a second individual gold was Delhi's Richa Mishra who beat back a strong challenge from Karnataka's K Chitra in the 400m individual medley to complete the eight-lap race in 5:30.10 while the hosts had a 2-3 finish through Chitra (5:33.91 ) and Abhinaya Shetty (5:33.83).

Kailash Nath clocked 16:56.80 in a morning race with a mediocre field. Had the race been in the evening Kailash felt he had a better chance of going for Abhjit's time of 16:53.84 set inDhaka SAF Games (1993). Though he improved on his Thiruvananthapuram nationals time of 17:13.91, his coach Mahendra Kumar Tokas, a former national champion over the distance, has set sights on 16:30 thereabouts for Kailash.

Butterfly champion in the junior section, Shane Peddar of Maharashtra who came `unprepared' for this competition picked up the other gold on the day in the 50m fly with a time of 0:27.00 beating an in-form Suresh Kumar of Railways (0.27.51).

First gold for SSCB: In the men's 3-metre spring board diving at Jayanagar pool, G Premakumar bagged the gold with a total of 397.85 points. Fourteen-year-old Yogesh Watwe of Maharashtra who trains with the Army Sports Company in Pune earned his first medal when he tallied 374.95 for a silver. Umesh Prasad of railways took the bronze in 367.95 points.