Abhin Bhaskar Devadiga (Karnataka) and Ancy Sojan (Kerala) claimed the under-20 men and women's 200m crowns respectively on the final day of the 36th National Junior Athletics Championships at the Sarusajai Stadium here on Wednesday.
While Abhin, a student from Udupi district, added the gold here in 21.34 seconds to the title he won a fortnight ago in the Federation Cup Junior U20 Athletics Championships in Bhopal, Thrissur district's Ancy denied Delhi runner Taranjeet Kaur the joy of completing the sprint double the second time in as many meets with a victory 24.51 seconds.
A lot of attention was focused on Tamil Nadu triple jumper Praveen Chithravel. He won by a comfortable margin by scripting the four best efforts at the pit today but he was a good 19cm short of the 16.01m mark that he managed a fortnight ago. In fact, he would be disappointed that he was unable to go past the 14m-mark twice in his six attempts.
He knew victory would be his, given that only one other competitor, Harpal Singh Mann (Punjab) managed two 15m jumps. And that the 19-year-old's biggest challenge was to find the rhythm that would help him aim for another 16m jump, just as he had managed in the Federation Cup Junior U20 Athletics Championships in Bhopal late last month.
In savouring the rare taste of victory, Madhya Pradesh's Arjun Waskale rewrote the under-18 boys 1500m meet record with a win in 3 minutes 50.38 seconds to erase the 3:53.63 mark held by Shankar in Coimbatore in 2016. With a previous best of 3:54.25 in December 2019, he made his maiden metric mile this year a memorable one with a tactical race against J Rijoy (Kerala).
Shahrukh Khan (Uttar Pradesh) and Haryana's Deepika produced National Record today in the under-16 events. Shahrukh Khan, who hails from Lucknow, won the boys 2000m in 5 minutes 27.87 seconds while Deepika threw the javelin 48.21m to win the girls' event, smashing the mark of 43.52m set by Guriya Kumari in Tirupati in 2018.
( With inputs from ANI )
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