Bhubaneswar, July 19: Maharashtra swimmer Vedaant Madhavan, who is the son of star actor R Madhavan, rewrote the national record in the 1500m freestyle event for Group I boys at the ongoing Junior National Aquatic Championships in Bhubaneswar.

Leading the pack with a good pace and an efficient stroke, Vedaant clocked 16:01.73 to erase his statemate Advait Page's 2017 record of 16:06.43 seconds on Sunday (July 17).

Vedaant beat Karnataka's Amogh Anand Venkatesh (16:21.98 seconds) and Bengal's Shubhojeet Gupta (16:34.06), who won the silver and bronze medals respectively. Madhavan, who is getting applauded for his performance in the latest bilingual movie Rocketry, shared a video on his Twitter handle and wrote, "Never say never. National Junior Record for 1500m freestyle broken."

In the video, commentators can be heard saying, "Around 16 minutes, he has broken Advait Page's record at the 780m mark." He added further, "I did not expect him to do it but he picked up his pace beautifully. I never thought he would be trying for the record."

Never say never . 🙏🙏🙏❤️❤️🤗🤗 National Junior Record for 1500m freestyle broken. ❤️❤️🙏🙏@VedaantMadhavan pic.twitter.com/Vx6R2PDfwc

— Ranganathan Madhavan (@ActorMadhavan) July 17, 2022

In the 400m freestyle for group II girls, Karnataka's Harshika Ramachandra created a new meet record with a time of 4:29.25 seconds, while statemate Rujula S finished 10s behind Harshika with a time of 4:39.53 seconds to settle for silver.

Harshika clocked 2:23.20 seconds to finish ahead of Karnataka's Tanishi Gupta who clocked 2:28.54 seconds and Telangana's Mokshitha Addanki.

Another record was set in the 50m breaststroke events for girls group I as Maharashtra's Apeksha Fernandes continued to shine, winning her second gold medal of the meet.

She clocked an impressive 33.49 seconds to win gold ahead of her statemate Zaara Jabbar who clocked 35.91 seconds. At the end of day two, Karnataka led the medal tally with a total of 31 medals, followed by Maharashtra at 17 and Telangana at 8.

(With PTI inputs)