Coimbatore: Hosts Tamil Nadu had a cheerful Saturday as seven of its athletes secured gold medals on the third day of competitions in 32nd National Junior Athletics championships at Nehru Stadium here.
The first of their gold medal came from young J Coleshiya in girls U14 long jump, who leapt 5.15m to take achieve her second win in three days. Earlier she got her first gold medal through victory in triathlon on the opening day. Local lad S Mithravarun, who represented the country in the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing two years ago, clinching the discus throw gold with a distance of 54.03m. Quarter-miler V Subha capitalized the absence of top-rung Kerala athletes to dominate the U18 400m in 56.46 secs.
TN sprinters wrests gold in three of the eight 100m finals contested today, viz., R Giridharani (girls U16), B Nithin (youth boys) and V Revathi (junior women).
Telangana boy Ch. Sudhakar became the fastest male sprinter of the meet by clocking 10.66 secs in Junior Men (U20) 100m. However he missed the meet mark by just 1/100th of a second.
The seventh gold of the day came as a surprise when young Punitha, hails from Namakkal, clinched the gold with her last round leap of 5.83m in long jump pushing last year’s World Schools champion Soma Karmarkar (West Bengal) to second place.
Haryana hammer thrower Poonam Jakhar opened the record spree with 54.66m in youth girls hammer throw. Her state-mate Dipender Dabas erased Shakti Solanki’s two year old mark with a toss of 20.63m.
Punjab shot putter Dhanveer Singh (17.88m in boys U14) and Kerala pole vaulter Nivya Antoni (3.32m in youth girls) accounted for the other records.
The big mark however reserved for current World School Games champion Rohit Yadav, who unleashed the 700 grams spear to a record distance of 72.05m. With similar implement he attained the top spot in Trabzon, Turkey, earlier this year while taking the top spot in the global school competition with a throw of 72.57m when competing in U18 division.
Defending champion Kerala climbed to second spot from previous night’s third place with 219 points, just 5 points behind Haryana. Hosts Tamil Nadu is now in third position with 188 points when the daylight faded away on Saturday.
