- Nishant Shetty covered 100m in just 9.51 seconds, breaking Olympic gold-medalist Usain Bolt and Srinivasa Gowda's 100 m records.
- Gowda created a buzz on the social media by scaling the distance in just 9.55 seconds.
- The Kambala racer, on Monday, also expressed an interest to train as an athlete at SAI's centre.
Kambala became the talk of the town when a racer, Srinivasa Gowda, broke the 100m World record by Olympic gold-medalist Usain Bolt. However, the 28-year-old’s record of 9.55 seconds was broken by another Kambala racer, Nishant Shetty, who scaled the distance in under 9.51 seconds in Venoor Kambala on Sunday. This is 0.07 seconds faster than Usain Bolt’s record of 9.58 seconds.
This is the traditional buffalo racing event’s fastest time ever as well. Shetty, who hails from Bajagoli Jogibettu, was the latest jockey to break Gowda’s record that created a buzz in the social media.
Yet another Usain Bolt Emerged from Kambala
Nishant Shetty broke the record of Srinivas Gowda
Shetty ran 143 mtr distance in 13.61s whereas Gowda took 13.62s to cover 142.5 mtr
Hope to see you soon as a Sprinter representing India in Olympics@KirenRijiju Pls take Cognizance pic.twitter.com/2bFCU1M3ZL
— Nisha Tweets (@NishaTweets18) February 18, 2020
While confirming the same, the Kambala organisers also said that apart from Shetty and Gowda’s feats, two other participants had joined the elite club of racers who completed the 100 metres distance in under ten seconds.
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These include Akkeri Suresh Shetty (9.57 secs), Iruvathur Anand (9.57 secs), Srinivas Gowda (9.55 secs) and Nishant Shetty (9.51 secs). Suresh and Anand Shetty had also participated in the same Venoor Kambala event where Nishant emerged 1st.
Gowda, who is a construction worker from Moodabidri, managed to cover the distance of 145m in just 13.62 seconds, besides running the first 100m in 9.55 seconds, at the Kambala at Aikala village near Mangalore on February 1.
Gowda expresses interest in pursuing athletics
Meanwhile, Srinivas Gowda met the Sports Authority of India officials on Monday, where he expressed his wish of taking up athletics. The SAI had invited the racer to participate in the trials. However, he didn’t participate in any assessment, citing his Kambala commitments as the reason.
While he may have shown enough promise to the sports enthusiasts, experts have warned from expecting immediate results.
“After that (returning), he has to go through a period of conditioning. He may not be in that kind of a condition where we can straight away take him into the track,” SAI South Centre Capt’s Senior Director Ajay Kumar Bahl said.
“The dynamics of both (Kambala & athletics) are different. Here he is running barefoot, and there is a bull he needs to hold and run. Running on the track is a different ballgame. But all the facilities at SAI will be there to back him,” he added.
