Haryana’s Rachna marked her shift from being a single-lapper to 800m with a memorable victory in the 35th National Junior Athletics Championships, breaking Tintu Luka’s 11-year-old under-20 meet record with a 2:06.12 effort in Guntur on Tuesday.
Luka had set the meet mark at 2:07.48 in Mysore in 2008. With a bit more challenge and effort, Rachna could have a had crack at Luka’s national U-20 record (2:05.21, also set in 2008) but the Haryana girl had to be content with the meet mark.
There were two national marks rewritten in the under-16 age-group. Haryana’s Parvej Khan secured the boys 800m record while Uttarakhand’s Reshma Patel earned the girls 3000m Race Walk record with gritty efforts.
Parvej Khan tackled the two-lap event with confidence and poise, his time of 1:54.78 improving upon Biren Gogoi’s record of 1:55.70 set 28 years ago in Cuttack. He was helped, of course, by the enormous pressure that Madhya Pradesh’s Shyam Milan Bind and Uttarakhand’s Suraj Yadav exerted on him.
In the girls’ 3000m race walk, Reshma Patel improved upon A Kumari’s record of 14:28.10 set in Muzaffarpur in 1990 by clocking 14:14.83. She did not face much competition, but she drew inspiration from her state-mate Roji Patel’s victory in the girls under-20 10,000m race walk earlier in the day.
