Chennai: Emerging star Sachin hurled the discus to a superb 58.11 metres to send the record book keeper into a tizzy here at the 12th Federation Cup Junior National Athletics Championship on Saturday.
The 18-year-old’s performance shot him into the limelight with a new National record (Sachin erased the existing record of Punjab’s Kripal Singh by just one cm), which also places him on No.1 in the current Asian Junior ranking in the shot put and 11th in the World. The Haryana youngster will be watched with plenty of anticipation in the forthcoming Asian Junior Championships and World Junior Championship, both events which he sailed through the qualification today with his National record-feat. Iran’s Mojtaba Shabaneh had won the gold in the last Asian Junior Championships in Colombo, two years ago, with a throw of 58.79m.
The young discus thrower had two outings in the international arena three years ago when he represented India in the World Youth Championships at Villeneuve de Ascq, France, and Commonwealth Youth Games at Douglas, Scotland.
Rajasthan’s Praveen Kumar missed the qualifier when finished second with 54.76m while another Haryana lad Nirbhay Singh settled for the bronze with a throw of 52.69m.
Navjeet sizzles in shot put
Punjab girl Navjeet Kaur Dhillon, who finished ninth in the senior Asian Championships at Pune last year (where she finished seventh in discus throw), was the cynosure of all eyes as she improved upon her state-mate Manpreet Kaur’s six year old national junior record. Incidentally her record – 15.89m - also came in the first round.
Having pocketed the gold and satisfied the new mark, Navjeet skipped the remaining rounds and encouraged her teammate Manpreet Singh Jr, who grabbed the silver medal with 13.53m. Uttarakhand’s Ramanpreet Kaur was third with 13.50m. Decathlete Ankit Saini become the second athlete from Haryana to qualify for the Asian Junior Championships today as she garnered 6600 points to achieve it and also improved the meet mark that stood in the name of Bhupinder Singh of Punjab since 2006 by 23 points.
Hosts Tamil Nadu dominated the sprint relay event and captured both the gold medals that were at stake. The junior women team comprising of Dhanalakshmi, Deepika, Vinodini and Archana improved upon Karnataka’s 13-year-old meet mark clocking a new time of 48.25 secs.
Earlier, Deepika added another gold medal to her kitty, clinching the 100m hurdles title while Dhanalakshmi bagged the bronze. Silver medallist, Karnataka’s Meghana Shetty clocked 14.28 secs to book a berth in the national team for the Asian Junior Championships.
Kerala hurdler Nasimudheen expectedly had won the 110m hurdles in 14.35 secs . Meanwhile, Kerala with 97 points pushed the previous day’s leaders and defending champion Haryana (92) to second spot in the championship race at the end of the second day.