Vijayawada: Haryana middle distance runner Beant Singh and budding high jump sensation Gayathry Sivakumar from Kerala dominated the opening day’s proceedings in the 30th National Junior Athletics Championships at Indira Gandhi Municipal Corporation Stadium here on Wednesday with new national records in their respective events.

The Junior Nationals, hosted for the third time in Vijayawada after 2004 and 2007 editions, commenced with great enthusiasm and lot of expectations as it is the first major competition organized by the newly constituted Andhra Pradesh Athletics Association after post-bifurcation of the southern state. Mainly sponsored by Reliance-Jio, the above championship also received financial support from a number of other sports promoters.

Beant Singh, who posted a world leading time in 800m during the senior Open Nationals at Delhi recently, eclipsed the national mark in 1,000m in the boys’ under-16 category with a marvelous time of 2:27.87 to stamp his class and pockets a meet record bonus of Rs. 25,000.

Uttarakhand’s Pawan Kumar (2:32.80) and another Haryana lad Sunil (2:33.86) have been the other two medalists in this event.

Gayathry Sivakumar successfully defends her title in under-14 high jump event by raising the bar to 1.61m that improved the previous national (1.59m) and meet (1.55m) records stood in her name.

Jharkhand’s Pratibha Kumari jumped 14 cm lesser than the Kerala girl for the silver medal while Kevinaa Ashwine, daughter of former national high jump champion Nallusamy Annavi from Tamil Nadu, got the bronze in 1.44m.

In the youth boys’ (u-18) 1500m Delhi runner Rahul improved the nine-year-old meet mark with a new time of 3:55.28. His time was faster than the winning mark of Ajay Kumar Saroj (Assam) in junior men’s category (3:59.93). The Assam boy was a bronze medalist in last year’s Asian Youth Games and finished fifth in the recent Youth Olympic Games at Nanjing, China.

Other prominent winners of the day include metric miler PU Chitra of Kerala (4:35.45 in GU-20), Maharashtra’s 1000m gold medalist Durga Pramod Deore (2:57:83 in GU-16) and Tamil Nadu discus thrower Mahalakshmi (41.69m in GU-20) among girls and Delhi high jumper Tejaswin Shankar (1.97m in BU-16), Haryana throwers Amit (51.30m in BU-16 discus throw) and Naveen (18m in BU-20 shot put).