Puneet Rana of Punjab and Mandar Divse of Police set their second national records in swimming while Viraj Patil won his third gold in diving by claiming one-metre springboard title on the penultimate day of the 58th Senior National Aquatic Championships on Saturday.
Puneet Rana clocked 1 minute 05.05 seconds in the men's 100 metres breaststroke, bettering Policeman Deepak Kumar's record, set at Thrissur, to win the gold.
Deepak settled for the silver with a timing of 1:07.69 secs. Puneet's previous record came in the 50m category.
Mandar erased his own record of last year for the 800 metres freestyle gold. The Maharashtra swimmer timed 8:42.79 seconds, which was more that three seconds less than his previous best.
The Police maintained their lead with the 15 gold, 11 silver and eight bronze medals while Karnataka improved their medal tally, bagging four more gold for the 11-12-10 count.
Viraj, who became the first ever swimmer to claim the three top diving honours -- one-metre springboard, three-metre springboard and high board -- in a single event, scored 327.05 points, setting a new meet record.
The 23-year-old Nasik diver was making his first appearance in the nationals and has trained under American coach Keith Russell at Utah in USA from 1998 to 2003.
Viraj, who had earlier also won the three honours in the '94 Asia-Pacific Championships, simultaneously pursued a computer engineering course at a university in Utah.
In the women's section, Olympian Shikha Tandon of Karnataka won her fifth consecutive gold in the 50m backstroke, clocking 31.38 secs, which, however, fell short of the meet record she set last year.
Karnataka also had gold coming their way in the 4x100m freestyle relay and in the 200m breaststroke, with Mrudula D clocking 2:51.36 seconds.
In the 1500m freestyle, Charu Mishra of Police won the gold, clocking 18 minutes 45.30 seconds, finishing ahead of Aarti Ghorpade of Maharashtra (19:09.11) and Awani Sawant of Police (19:19.33) in that order.
In the men's 50m backstroke, V Arun clocked 28.20 seconds while Policemen T K Senthil Kumar and Arjun Muralidharan were second and third respectively in 28.32 and 28.34 seconds.
Services and Railways will meet in the men's waterpolo final tomorrow. The women's final will be played between Kerala and Police.
