Coimbatore: Mangalore University regained overall champion title in the five day 77th All India Inter-University Athletics championships that concluded at Nehru Stadium here on Sunday afternoon.  Mangalore was champion when the meet was organized two years ago at Moodbidri.

Mangalore garnered 178 points to achieve this honour, thanks to the 125 points came from their male athletes who annexed the men’s trophy.  Mahatma Gandhi university retained the women’s crown with 84 points that helped the team finishing runners-up overall.

Olympian Ayyasamy Dharun, representing Mangalore University, improved his meet mark in 400m hurdles with a noteworthy 50.81 secs and adjudged as a ‘Best Athlete’ in the men’s division.  The honour in women’s category went to Pune university’s Sanjivani Jadhav, who represented India in the World University Games two years ago, for her excellent performance in 10,000m (33:33.97).  It is indeed a rare occasion that a distant runner getting the best athlete award in recent years.

In women’s 400m hurdles Anu Raghavan earned her fourth gold medal in inter-university meets.  Anu got her first two wins for Calicut university in 2013 and 2014, ran for Mahatma Gandhi in 2015 and was wearing the Mangalore university colours this time!

The concluding day saw three meet records being bettered.  Apart from Dharun’s record in hurdles, his Mangalore teammate Sreejith Mon shattered 13 year old triple jump record of three times Olympian Renjith Maheswary (16.03m) with a leap of 16.05m.  However the most impressive mark of the day came from Madras University 4x400m relay quartet consists of Manu Kuriakose, Aakash Babu, Gokula Kannan and R Mohan Kumar that clocked 3:10.82 to erase Calicut University’s previous record of 3:13.40 from Kochi-2008.  Incidentally the first four teams in that event have dipped under the previous mark.

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Madras university sprinter Archana Suseendran completes a sprint double by winning the 200m in 24.33 secs to add her 100m gold that she won on Thursday.  Her teammate, Olympian Mohan Kumar also pockets the second individual gold medal by taking the men’s 200m (21.3 secs) this evening.  Earlier he won the 400m title with a meet mark and added the third gold medal as a member of the longer relay quartet.

Metric miler P.U. Chitra’s effort (4:34.13) to achieve a hat-trick in women’s 1500m could not materialized as the Calicut university runner was tired in the waning stages of the race and gave up the top spot to Harmilan Bains (4:44.12) from Punjabi University, Patiala.

In the half-marathon races held at K.P.R. College of Technology grounds this morning Mangalore’s Ranjith Kumar Patel won the men’s race in 1 hour 6 minutes 37 seconds beating his teammate and last year champion Kumbar Kantilal Devram (1:07:07).  The women’s title also went to the same university athlete Jyothi Chauhan (1:17:05).