Punjab shot-putter Dhanvir Singh and Kerala 400-metre hurdler Vishnu Priya set new meet records on the final day of the 15th National Youth Athletics Championships en route to gold medals in their respective events at Vadodara on Wednesday.
Dhanvir threw 19.69-metre in his fifth attempt to erase the earlier meet record of 19.34-metre set by Navtejdeep Singh in 2011. The silver medal in the competition was claimed by Adish Ghildiyal of Uttarakhand, who recorded a best effort of 18.23-metre. Aniket Kala of Uttarakhand took the bronze with a best effort of 17.98 metres.
In women’s 400 metres hurdles, Priya, representing Kerala, crossed the finish line with a season best time of 1:02.52 seconds. In doing so, she erased the previous meet record of 1:02.58 seconds set by PO Sanya in Bambolim in 2015.
Priya was far ahead of the field with the silver medallist K Prajna (1:05.08 seconds) of Karnataka trailing nearly three seconds behind. The bronze went to to Jyoshna Sabar of Odisha who clocked 1:05.82 seconds.
In women’s 200-metre race, Kerala’s Ancy Sojan won the gold in 24.91 seconds. Although it was short of Dutee Chand’s meet record of 24.49 seconds recorded in 2012, Sojan had the disadvantage of having to run the semi-finals of the 200 metres in the morning.
Sojan still managed to improve on her semi-final timing of 24.95 seconds in the final. The silver medal in the competition went to Kirti Bhoite who clocked 25.42 seconds. The bronze medal went to Giridharani of Tamil Nadu with a timing of 25.50 seconds.
Meanwhile, Sandra Babu earned her second gold medal in the jumps competition. The 17-year-old from Kerala added the triple jump gold medal to the long jump she had won on Saturday. Babu cleared a distance of 12.51 metres to get the better of Tamil Nadu’s J Coleshiya who recorded a best jump of 12.24 metres. The bronze medal went to Maharashtra’s Sharvari Parulekar (11.16 metres).
Dhanvir, winner of boys shot put event, and Aparna Roy, winner of girls 100-metre hurdles gold medal, were declared the ‘best athletes’ of the meet. The overall team championships title went to Haryana (165 points) while Kerala finished as runner-up with 150 points.
