Coimbatore: Poonam Rani from Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa, completed a ‘hat-trick’ in women’s javelin throw as she set the spear out to an improved distance of 51.96m. She was the winner of earlier two editions of the all-india inter-university athletics championships with performances of 48.16 and 49.75m. However her today’s mark fell short of the meet record 52.63m held in the name of Annu Rani from Chaudhary Charn Singh University, Meerut.
The penultimate day of the competitions have witnessed two meet marks being bettered, both of them in steeplechase. Managalore’s Haribaksh Singh accounted for the first with a time of 9:15.08 while Lucknow girl Vijay Laxmi successfully defends her title improving her last year’s record clocking 10:43.60. Her teammate Nandini Gupta also improved the previous time while finishing second in 10:49.97.
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Incidentally steeplechase had been the newest event in the championship’s programme having introduced only four years ago.
The men’s sprint relay quartet from University of Madras consisting of Karthikeyan, Gokula Krishnan, Elakkiya Dasan and Siva Kumar pips the team from Mahatma Gandhi University (Kottayam) at the post to defend the title 41.19 to 41.20 secs. However the team fails their expectation of improving the meet mark of 41.03s held by Kerala University created two years ago at Moodbidri.
In other events, Mangalore’s Kuldeep retained his crown in 20,000m walk. However his winning time – 1:33:01.32 – was nearly three and a half minutes slower than last year.
K.T. Neena brought the gold in 5,000m race walk (23:13.3) for Calicut University. It was the fifth ever title won by a Calicut varsity walker in this event, as the list of previous winners include some of the best in the business like Jency Joy (Thenhipalam-2002 and Jamshedpur-2004), P. Nisha (Bangalore-2007) and R. Jijimol (Guntur-2011).
M. Sugina returned to a facile victory in 100m hurdles (14.05s), that brought Calicut another precious medal in this event after a gap of 23 years as Cicy Mathew won the previous one way back in 1994 at Kottayam. In a similar fashion Maymon Poulose clinched the gold in 110m hurdles (14.36s), exactly ten years after K.A. Harish did so at Bangalore in 2007.
Pune university runner and current Asian youth champion Kisan Tadvi completes a double by taking 10,000m gold in the morning (30:57.66) to add his 5,000m victory on Thursday.
