Dondapati Jayaram grabbed his second gold medal of the 39th National Junior Athletics Championships as Odisha won the U20 4x100m relay at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar on Monday evening.
The team comprising Mahendra Santa, Astik Pradhan and Rajendra Sidhu besides Jayaram won the title with a timing of 41.10s, a new meet record. The earlier record of 41.28s belonged to Kerala, a feat they achieved in 2019.
As for Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, they finished second and third with a timing of 41.31s and 42.33s respectively.
Earlier in the day, Astik also did well to finish second in the U20 400m category with a timing of 46.97s behind Delhi’s Jay Kumar, who came close to breaking the national record.
Jay not only ran a PB of 46.29s but in doing so, he broke the meet record — 46.59s — which was achieved by Amoj Jacob in 2017. The run was so good that he was just 0.03s away from matching the national record — 46.29s — which is also held by Jacob.
As for Kerala’s Arjun Pradeep he came third with a timing of 47.61s.
Meanwhile, Haryana’s international high jumper Pooja scaled 1.85m to improve the national U18 women’s high jump record during heptathlon competition. Her previous best and national record of 1.83m was recorded during World U20 Athletics Championships held in Lima, Peru, in August.
In the U18 category, Kerala’s Kiran K also put up a show as he won the 110m hurdles in 13.64s. In the semifinals, he even fared better as he clocked 13.47s, to better his own NR of 13.52s.
He has been doing quite well over the past few months as earlier this year, he had also grabbed the top spot in the U18 Championships held in Bilaspur and finished a creditable fourth in the U20 National Federation Cup in Lucknow.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra’s Saif Chafekar and Dhairyasheel Patil came second and third, respectively, with a timing of 13.90s and 14.16s.
However, there was a shocking result in the U20 women’s 100m hurdles as Maharashtra’s Crystal Vadake beat Odisha’s Sabita Toppo to grab the gold. Sabita, who won the silver in the 100m hurdles at the Asian Youth Athletics Championship in Kuwait two years back and has a PB of 13.96s, failed to deliver in front of the home crowd and came second with a timing of 14.17s. As for Crystal, she grabbed the gold by clocking 14.10s. Yamini Karthikeyan of Tamil Nadu came third in 14.56s.
Later at night, Rajasthan’s Siddharth Choudhary won gold in the men’s U-20 shot put with a best throw of 19.16m. Siddharth has been having a wonderful year as he also finished on top of the podium in the South Asian Junior Athletics Championship, held at Chennai’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in September. There he broke the meet record with a throw of 19.19m.