Thiruvananthapuram: It was an evening mixed with joy, emotion and disappointments for the hosts Kerala as the dozen events on the cards unfolded dramatically at Kerala University Stadium during the penultimate day of athletics competitions in National Games here.

Unquestionably the star of the day was Kerala’s O.P. Jaisha, who exemplarily completes the record distance double in style that puts even the first national record set in this edition in men’s javelin throw to sidelines.

Jaisha, who sets the record in 5000m on the opening day, overtook all her compatriots including Preeja Sreedharan lap after the lap and went on to win the 10000m race in yet another Games Record 33:08.55 as the roar went sky high from cheering crowd who made it a full house on Thursday night.

Former Asian Games champion Preeja Sreedharan, who missed out the podium on Monday, made her last event of the career a memorable one as she sprinted out to win the silver from Maharashtrian Swati Gadhave in a time of 34:58.85. Swati went home with her second bronze medal in four days with 34:59.73 while Preeja ran a “Good Bye” Lap amidst cheer from everyone gathered on the stadium that includes Kerala Chief Minister Oomen Chandy.

Haryana spearman Rajender Singh Dalvir hurled the spear to a noteworthy 82.23m to qualify for the World Championships in Beijing this August.
Rajender, who had a previous best of 79.32m from the last year’s Federation Cup at Patiala, eclipsed Anil Kumar Singh’s eight-year-old national record of 80.72m and the Rohit Kumar’s meet mark of 75.03m from 2011 edition at Ranchi. The world championship qualification mark in this event stood at 82m.

Services thrower Devinder Singh (75.34m) and Uttar Pradesh’s Vipin Kasana (75.18m) also bettered the previous meet mark in this event.

The evening’s programme commenced with a meet mark in women’s 100m hurdles wherein Tamil Nadu star Gayathry Govindaraj clocked 13.66 secs to remove Anuradha Biswal’s 14-year-old 13.81 secs from the books. Her state-mate Deepika, first to out from blocks along with Karnataka girl Meghana Shetty, could not match the power of her training partner after the midway stage and finished third in 13.96 whilst Meghana grab the silver with 13.89 secs. Meghana, who improved her previous best 14.01 secs from the Inter-University championships at Moodbidri, finished second again to Gayathri as in last month.

National record-holder Siddhant Thingalaya from Maharashtra, on his first appearance at the National Games, set the second meet mark of the day with 13.83 secs. J Surendhar from Tamil Nadu could not defend his title from Ranchi and finished second today clocking 13.98 secs.

As expected Anu Raghavan won the women’s race to bring Kerala state their first gold medal of the evening in 58.63 secs, that was a full second ahead of second placed Santosh Kumari of Haryana. The petite Kerala girl V.V. Jisha, member of India’s gold winning 4x400m relay quartet in Taipei Asian Junior championships last year, finished a credible third with a personal best 60.93 secs.

Joseph Abraham, the Guangzhou Asiad gold medalist and national record-holder in 400m hurdles, had a false start in the evening’s final to disappoint the local fans who were eagerly gathered in large number to cheer him. Former Youth Olympic Games silver medalist Durgesh Kumar Pal cashed in this opportunity to win the gold in 50.66 secs ahead of his Services colleague Ramachandran (50.93s) while the Tamil Nadu lad Binu Aquito completes the podium in a slow 51.74 secs.

The dual between two Commonwealth Games bronze medalists, Arpinder Singh of Punjab (Glasgow-2014) and Renjith Maheswary of Kerala (Delhi-2010) could not deliver the anticipated thrill as both of them fails to go near their personal bests or breach the 17m mark. However Renjith, who won two bronze medals in the last two editions of National Games in 2007 (Guwahati) and 2011 (Ranchi) triumphed this time with the Gold ‘at home’ by leaping to a new record distance of 16.66m. However it was fell short of Beijing Worlds qualification norm of 16.90m. Arpinder’s best of the day – 16.41m – fetch him the silver while Rakesh Babu (Services) settled with the bronze medal in 16.29m.

Tamil Nadu boy G. Lakshmanan, representing Services here, accounted for another distance double of the Games with a meet record 29:13.50 in men’s 10000m race. It was indeed a sweep of medals for Services with Kheta Ram (30:01.14) and T. Gopi (30:15.03) taking the other medals.

High jumper Jithin C. Thomas and hammer thrower Neeraj Kumar inflated the services gold medal tally further.

Team Kerala completes the evening’s proceedings with two more wins through their relay quartets in men’s (40.77s) and women’s (45.26 secs NMR).