Doondapati Jayara of Odisha and Tamanna of Haryana emerged as the fastest runner boy and girl of the Khelo India Youth Games 2022 but found their thunder stolen in track and field by the host's Dev Kumar Meena, who won gold in Boys Pole Vault by breaking the national youth record with a vault of 4.91m. The earlier record stood at 4.90m. That effort of Meena could not stop Maharashtra from holding on to the top spot in the medal tally at the end of day five on account of having more silvers, as both they and the hosts Madhya Pradesh tallied 14 golds thus far.
Besides Dev Kumar, the stars of the day certainly were Jayara, whose time of 10.53 secs would have been a national youth record but for wind assistance and Tamanna, who breasted the tape first in a time of 12.16 secs to take the Girl's 100m dash, widely considered the most prestigious events in any multi-sport event.
MP's golds came in Athletics (3), as they had a great time at the TT Nagar stadium in the capital city picking up eight medals on the first day of track and field and one each in Archery, Kayaking and Yogasana. Nitin Verma of MP, also won his third gold of the games when he won the K-1 200m Kayaking race in the Upper Lake area of the capital.
Day five of the KIYG 2022 MP saw as many as seven sporting disciplines reach a conclusion. In Kayaking and Canoeing, MP, Odisha and Kerala shared the three gold medals on offer while at the SAI Indoor Hall on the outskirts of Bhopal, Haryana and West Bengal won the Boys and Girls volleyball golds respectively. At the Abhay Prashal in Indore, West Bengal's Ankur Bhattacharjee and Maharashtra's Taneesha Kotecha won the Boys and Girls Table Tennis singles golds, while at the M.P. Badminton Academy in Gwalior, Haryana's Divika Sihag won the Girls singles final with a 19-21, 21-18, 21-10 victory over Maharashtra's Naishaa Kaur Bhatoye. Telengana's K. Lokesh Reddy won the Boys title with a 21-19, 15-21, 22-20 win over Punjab's Abhinav Thakur.
Yogasana, which concluded in Ujjain's Madhav Seva Nyas Hall, Maharashtra and MP again shared the spoils when it came to gold medals. Archery and Kho Kho too concluded at the Ranital Sports complex in Jabalpur. In the Archery recurve competitions Rajasthan's Rampal Choudhary defeated West Bengal's Juyel Sarkar 6-2 in the final for gold. Ridhi of Haryana won the Girls recurve with a 6-2 win over state-mate Bhajan Kaur. In fact, it was 1-2-3 Haryana as Tisha Punia won bronze.
In the Compound Archery events, Haryana's Kushal Dalal won gold with a 147-141 victory over Andhra's T.G. Mani Ratnam in the Boys final whereas Maharashtra's Aditi Gopichand Swami defeated Rajasthan's Priya Gurjar 146-145 for the Girls gold. In the Compound Mixed Archery team of Sonia Thakur and Amit Kumar defeating Maharashtra's Bishal and Manjuri in the finals to emerge champions.
In the other competition which also concluded at the Ranital Sports Complex, Maharashtra and Odisha won the Boys and Girls Kho Kho golds respectively. Maharashtra beat Delhi 38-28 (18-16, 20-12) in the Boys final, but the their girls could not make it a double, going down to Odhisa 32-26 (14-14, 18-12) in Girls final. Odisha also won bronze in the Boys category while Karnataka bagged the same in the Girls category.
( With inputs from ANI )
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