Ranchi: The day belonged to Sri Lanka as they garnered the top spot in 8 out of 16 events decided on the second and final day of 2nd South Asian Junior Athletics championships which concluded with a grandeur closing ceremony in the magnificent Birsa Munda Sports Complex here on Tuesday.
Supun Viraj Randeniya delivered the best performance of the day while winning the junior men’s 110m hurdles clocking 13.64 secs that bettered the previous meet mark (14.62s) held by T. Balamurugan of India by almost 1 second as well as his personal best of 14.04 secs clocked at Colombo this September. His winning margin was so huge that teammate Malin Udaya Kumara claimed the silver in a distance 14.41s ahead of host nation’s Tarundeep Singh who went away with the bronze medal in 14.51 secs.
As expected Indian sprinter Archana Suseentran and distance runner P.U. Chitra completes a double by pocketing the gold in 200m (24.32 secs) and 3000m (9:51.13) events respectively. In that process Archana, the Anna University student from Chennai, bettered the previous mark with an absolute 1 second improvement.
There were five other meet marks on the last of day of competitions. Pazhanivel Anburaja, who showed initial hiccups in long jump, went on to win the title with a notable 7.41m leap on his fourth round. Half-miler Jessy Joseph, a prodigy of lndian athletics legend P.T. Usha, clocked an impressive 2:08.38. Earlier on the same tracks Jessy registered her personal best 2:06.82 during the national open championships.
Meghana Shetty in 100m hurdles (14.54s) and Sachin Kumar in discus throw (54.44m) have been the other Indians entered the record-books. Lankan sprinter Himasha Eashan posted a meet mark in 200m as he clocked 21.44 secs to push the Indian Husandeep Singht to second place in 21.63 secs. Husandeep, who earlier collected a silver 100m yesterday, was satisfied with his second medal this evening.
Sri Lankan athletes made a clean sweep of medals in all the four relay races held in the evening. They had easy wins in all but a stiff competition in the junior men’s 4 x 400m in which India’s Sandeep Lathwal and Sri Lankan Harsha Chathuranga Pieris locked in to a battle till the wire. However Harsha ward-off the challenge and finished two-tenths of a second ahead of the Indian to claim the gold for his nation.
The hosts improved their medal tally from the first edition as they secured a stupendous 20 gold, an equal number of silver, besides a dozen bronze medals (total 52). However it was 1 gold lesser from the inaugural edition held at Colombo in 2007. On the other hand the island nation improved their previous performance with 10 gold, 10 silver and 14 bronze medals (total 34). Six of their ten gold medals have come from their female athletes. Bangladesh with 3 bronze medal and Pakistan with a lone bronze medal finished third and fourth in the medal table while other participating nations – Afghanistan, Maldives and Nepal – could not secure any medal this time.
The Sri Lankan capital Colombo was chosen to organise the next edition of the SAF junior athletics championships 2015.