Karnataka swimmers dominated the first day of finals in swimming at the SPM pool in the first inaugural Khelo India School Games on Thursday. Their swimmers won six of the nine gold medals on offer and both the boys and girls contributed three each. Earlier in the day, sprinter VA Shashikanth from Government Sports High School and Youth Centre in Vidyanagar gave them their first gold when he won the 200 metres. That saw Karnataka lead the medals tally with seven gold and three bronze medals for a total of 10 medals.
Thursday saw a total of 17 gold medals on offer with nine in the pool, seven on the track and one in wrestling.
While Karnataka ruled the pool, honours were evenly distributed in athletics, where Haryana won two gold and five states Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Kerala and Tamil Nadu won one each.
Sharing the second place on the medals tally behind Karnataka are Tamil Nadu and Haryana with three golds each. Both states have earned their gold medals from athletics.
Down the medals tally, Kerala and Maharashtra have two gold, both from athletics, while seven states, Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Andhra Pradesh have one gold each. A total of 14 states, from the 36 which are competing in these Games have already found a place in the medals tally.
The first wrestling gold went to Maharashtra's Nikhil Mali, who won his bouts against Amit of Haryana and Maharashtra's Krushna Ghodke. Amit took the silver as he won his bout against Ghodke.
The day's biggest star was Karnataka swimmer, Srihari Nataraj, who bettered his own national record in 100m backstroke with a time of 56.90 seconds, improving on his own mark by nine hundredths of second.
He was also part of the Karnataka team which raced away to a gold medal in 4 x 100m freestyle, where he swam the final leg.