Patiala: The team from Oil and Natural Gas Commission retained the overall trophy in the 17th Federation Cup senior athletics championships which concluded at Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports grounds here this evening with a whooping tally of 177 points. Kerala (113), Tamil Nadu (78), Haryana (71) and Punjab (66) finished in that order behind the leader.
Although none of the athletes met the World championship qualifying norms in the four-days of competitions at least two women athletes came nearer to it in M.R. Poovamma (52.75 secs) and Asha Roy (23.70s), both having missed the “B” standard in 4/10th of a second in 400 and 200m events respectively.
Among the men, the outstanding athletes were long jumper Ankit Sharma (7.91 mtrs) and high hurdler Siddhant Thingalaya (13.84 secs). The “B” qualification marks in these events have been 8.10m and 13.50s.
Everyone had high hopes on Siddhant, who sets his first national mark in 110m hurdles at the same venue and went on to improve it to 13.65 secs while competed in the Belgian Nationals at Brussels last year before sustained an injury which prevents his ambition to gain a berth on the
team bound for London Olympics.
Having won the Australian Nationals at Sydney with a wind-aided 13.72 secs less than two weeks ago and the fastest man title at this meet on the opening day, Siddhant was expected to achieve the World championships qualification here. However he could not materialise it this afternoon, but confident of making it in the coming weeks.
Former Asian junior bronze medallist Hemasree Jayabal, a trainee of Nandakumar and LIC employee from Coimbatore, snatched the women’s 100m hurdles gold in a photo-finish from Kerala’s K.V. Sajitha (14.37 to 14.40 secs).
Reigning Asian long jump champion Mayookha Johny garnered a second gold in triple jump today with a decent 13.46m leap. Although she did cross 13m in all her six try-outs, Mayookha could not find her rhythm to go beyond 14m for seriously trying to attain the global norms. Same was the case with Olympians Om Prakash Singh in shot put and Krishna Punia in women’s discus throw events.
Triple jumper Arpinder Singh and quarter-miler M.R. Poovamma have been adjudged as ‘Best Athletes’ of the meet.