Patiala: It was a memorable outing for Maharishi Dayanand University’s Ankit Malik as he secured a distance double by clinching the 10,000m gold with a new meet mark of 30:05.76 that improved Suresh Kumar’s three-year-old time of 30:12.40. Earlier he won the 5,000m on the opening day.

The fifth and penultimate day’s proceedings in Punjabi University Sports Complex also witnessed the maiden appearance of 3,000m steeplechase in the inter-university programme. National junior record-holder Parul Chaudhary (Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut) won the inaugural women’s race in a time of 11:03.43 while the men’s title went to hosts Punjabi University’s Deep Chand in 9:36.20.
 

Thrower Navjeet Kaur (Guru Nanak Dev) was the second athlete to complete a “double” today as she tossed the 4 kg metal ball to 13.69m to win the shot put. She won the discus throw with a personal best 51.23m on the opening day.

N.V. Sheena and Silpa Chacko made it 1-2 for Mahatma Gandhi University (Kottayam) in women’s triple jump. Sheena hop, step and jumped a decent 13.09m for the ‘numero uno’ position while Shilpa logged 12.74m for the silver. Punjabi’s Bhumika Thakur—the long jump winner—made it to the podium again with a 12.31m third place jump.

Delhi varsity boy and former Youth Olympic Games silver medallist Arjun humbled rest of the field by taking the discus gold with a throw of 52.59m. However he was failing in his bid to erase Kirpal Singh’s meet mark of 54.44m. Incidentally Arjun won every major competition this year starting from Federation Cup at Patiala, Inter-State at Chennai and Open Nationals at Ranchi and posted a personal best 56.78m at FedCup in Patiala in April. Parveen Kumar (JRNRV Udaipur, 49.31m) and Prashant Malik (Panjab, 49.15m) were the other podium finishers in this event.

Hosts Punjabi University continued their gold run as Parveen Kumar (Pole Vault, 4.70m) and Sonu (women’s High Jump, 1.71m) brought further laurels on the penultimate day.