Sprinter Taranjeet Kaur (Delhi) and distance runner Komal Chandrakant Jagdale (Maharashtra) completed double crowns in the inaugural National U-23 Athletics Championships at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium (warm-up track) in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Having emerged the fastest woman of the meet on Tuesday, Taranjeet Kaur added the women’s 200m with another personal best time of 23.57 seconds today to confirm her growing stature in the Indian sprint firmament. AT Daneshwari clocked her maiden sub-24-second 200m in winning silver behind the Delhi teenager.
Komal Jagdale, winner of the 5000m on the opening day, brought the curtains down on the meet with a facile victory in the 3000m Steeplechase in 9:51.76. Running virtually all by herself, she strove hard to go faster than her personal best but on a humid evening, she settled to be a shade slower than that. It was only the third sub-10-minute time in her career.
In the morning, there was a surprise in store for Triple Jumper Praveen Chithravel. He had had just one legal jump as he kept looking for his wonted rhythm, The 16,03m effort on his third attempt put him in the lead briefly until his State-mate Gailey Venister Devasahayam hopped, stepped and jumped to a personal best distance of 16.20m.
Jeswin Aldrin made it three out of four gold medals in the horizonal jumps for Tamil Nadu to add to the women’s Long Jump won by Sherin Abdul Gaffoor on Tuesday. Kerala’s Sandra Babu claimed the women’s Triple Jump and Maharashtra’s Sharvari Parulekar the silver to deny Tamil Nadu the chance to sweeping all four gold.
Delhi’s middle-distance runner, KM Chanda won her battle with KM Deeksha in the 800m after watching the Madhya Pradesh rival steal a march on the final lap of the 1500m a couple of days ago. It was some consolation for Delhi that conducted the meet at short notice after Tamil Nadu declared that it would be unable to host the competition.
