Patiala: When Indrajit Singh clinched a silver medal in the World University Games at Kazan, Russia, only few ardent athletics followers realized that it was the first of its kind won by an Indian. The Haryana shot putter has progressed his way on the ladder of success in a slow and steady pace.
Indrajit improved his personal best to 19.89m on Sunday evening to make sure his name entered on the Incheon-bound team from India. In that process he also bettered Bahadur Singh Sagoo\u2019s 12-year-old meet mark of 19.68m on the second day of Federation Cup senior national athletics championship.<\/p>\n
Pre-event favourite and national record-holder Om Prakash Singh was exactly one metre behind Indrajit for the second place while his ONGC teammate Jasdeep Singh made it to the podium with his 18.84m toss. It was the second time that Indrajit beaten Om Prakash in the national competition. He won the inter-state championships last year in Chennai where Om Prakash finished third. However the ONGC thrower make amends by taking a bronze medal ahead of Indrajit in the Asian championships at Pune and clinched the Open Nationals title in Ranchi thereafter. <\/p>\n
Om Prakash delivered his best of the season \u2013 19.74m \u2013 during his training stint at United States in June and won the Asian indoor championships at Hangzhou earlier this year. His selection to the Asian Games in Incheon is now hanging on balance and up to the selectors of Athletics Federation of India to decide immediately after the Federation Cup.<\/p>\n
Jyotisankar and Sharadha fastest athletes<\/p>\n
Army lad Jyoti Sankar Debnath, based at Artillery Centre in Hyderabad and representing Manipur, was declared fastest man of the meet as he cruised through the finish-line in 10.50 secs. Pre-race favourite Krishna Kumar Rane (10.62) and Jamaica-trained Amiya Kumar Mallick (10.65) earned the other two medals. It was indeed for the first time that a Manipuri athlete had taken the major national title. Incidentally it was thirty years ago that H. Raikumar Singh had won the boys\u2019 under-15 title in the undivided inter-state national championships for Manipur clocking 11.5 secs at Delhi in 1984.<\/p>\n
Tamil Nadu\u2019s Sharadha Narayana once again ascertained her supremacy in the women\u2019s race as she clocked a modest 11.72 secs to win the title ahead of Odisha girl Srabani Nanda (11.86) and Bengal\u2019s Asha Roy (11.92). Sharadha had won the inter-state title in Lucknow about two months ago with a blistering 11.39 secs clocking.<\/p>\n
Reigning Asian Games champion Ashwini Akkunji won the 400m hurdles in 57.96 secs. It was more than 1 second slower than the AFI qualifying norm of 56.88s. Kerala\u2019s Anu Raghavan (58.58) pips Ashwini\u2019s Karnataka teammate M. Arpitha (58.69) for the silver.<\/p>\n
Another 2010 Asiad gold medalist, Joseph Abraham, however could manage only a second place in the men\u2019s race as he timed 50.75 secs against winner Jithin Paul\u2019s 50.48s.<\/p>\n
Long jump national record-holder Kumaravel Premkumar once again disappoints his fans as he finished a poor eleventh in the evening\u2019s final with a paltry 6.82m. He delivered the leading mark of 7.42m in yesterday\u2019s qualifiers. Ankit Sharma from Madhya Pradesh accomplished a \u2018hat-trick\u2019 of wins in this event as he leapt 7.55m for the top spot on Sunday. Inter-state champion Vigneshvar (7.39m) and his Tamil Nadu teammate Silambarasan (7.36m) took the silver and bronze medals respectively.<\/p>\n
Haryana half-miler Sushma Devi clinched her second straight title at a national level competition this year, adding the FedCup gold to her Inter-State victory in Lucknow earlier this year, clocked 2:11.76. TN runner Gomathi gave a stiff challenge to Devi till the wire before finishing second in 2:11.99.<\/p>\n
In the men\u2019s 800m, Kerala\u2019s Sajeesh Joseph delivered a personal best 1:46.81 for the title in a ding-dong battle from ONGC runner Manjeet Singh. Sajeesh was a champion here in 2012 but lost the title to Manjeet last year. It was indeed a sweet revenge for the Kerala runner this evening and incidentally was just a shade away from the Asiad qualifying norm of 1:46.48 when eclipsed the 2006 meet mark of Ghamanda Ram (1:47.74) by nearly a minute! Manjeet clocked 1:48.48 for the silver whilst another Keralite Jinson Johnson went past the finish in 1:50.74 for bronze.<\/p>\n
Although it was only just matched the gold winning time of Charles Borromeo in 1982 Asian Games at Delhi, today\u2019s mark put Sajeesh sixth in the Indian all-time lists for 800m.<\/p>\n
Rajasthan\u2019s Daya Ram had won the grueling decathlon event by garnering 6,892 points ahead of V.V. Raneesh of Gujarat, who replicated his second place position from the last edition in 6,735 points.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the morning Rani Yadav of Uttar Pradesh had won the women\u2019s 20 km race walk in 1 hour 42 minutes and 24 seconds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Patiala: When Indrajit Singh clinched a silver medal in the World University Games at Kazan, Russia, only few ardent athletics followers realized that it was the first of its kind won by an Indian. The Haryana shot putter has progressed his way on the ladder of success in a slow and steady pace.
Indrajit improved his personal best to 19.89m on Sunday evening to make sure his name entered on the Incheon-bound team from India. In that process he also bettered Bahadur Singh Sagoo\u2019s 12-year-old meet mark of 19.68m on the second day of Federation Cup senior national athletics championship.<\/p>\n
Pre-event favourite and national record-holder Om Prakash Singh was exactly one metre behind Indrajit for the second place while his ONGC teammate Jasdeep Singh made it to the podium with his 18.84m toss. It was the second time that Indrajit beaten Om Prakash in the national competition. He won the inter-state championships last year in Chennai where Om Prakash finished third. However the ONGC thrower make amends by taking a bronze medal ahead of Indrajit in the Asian championships at Pune and clinched the Open Nationals title in Ranchi thereafter. <\/p>\n
Om Prakash delivered his best of the season \u2013 19.74m \u2013 during his training stint at United States in June and won the Asian indoor championships at Hangzhou earlier this year. His selection to the Asian Games in Incheon is now hanging on balance and up to the selectors of Athletics Federation of India to decide immediately after the Federation Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-isn-front-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n