Gurindervir Singh (Punjab) set the athletics track in the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports ablaze with a new meet record time of 10.27 seconds as he won the men’s 100m in the Fast&UP 60th National Inter-State Athletics Championships on Saturday.
S Dhanalakshmi confirmed his growing stature as India’s premier woman sprinter by handing Dutee Chand another defeat in the final.The 20-year-old Gurindervir Singh, who has held sway in the sprints in the recent times, was quickly off the blocks, found the pace and the momentum to leave his team-mate Lovepreet Singh and the National Record holder Amiya Kumar Mallick fighting for the lesser medals.
With Hima Das pulling up injured after finishing third in heats in the morning, the women’s race was expected to be a clash featuring Dhanalakshmi and her more experienced team-mates Dutee Chand and Archana Suseendran as well as Sri Lanka’s Amasha de Silva.
The sprinters shared the limelight with the rising long jumper Shaili Singh (Uttar Pradesh). Preparing for the World Junior Athletics Championships, to be held in Kenya in August, she leapt to a career best distance of 6.48m in the Punjabi University facility to be among the world’s top ranked junior jumpers this year.
At the same venue, National Record holder Tejaswin Shankar cleared 2.20m effortlessly to win the men’s High Jump.He made a game attempt to get the meet record by raising the bar to 2.26m after two unsuccessful jumps at 2.23m.He achieved his primary aim of raking up some points to move up the World Athletics Ranking with a win here.Uttar Pradesh’s 19-year-old Usaid Khan won the gruelling decathlon competition with an all-round effort that fetched him 6893 points.