National Junior Athletics: Akashdeep Singh, Pranjali Patil set new national records

Six national records were bettered on the second day of the 34th Junior National
Athletics Championships in Ranchi on Saturday at the Birsa Munda Athletics Stadium.

The record-breakers were Akashdeep Singh in the U-20 Boys 10,000m race walk, Pawana Nagraj in the U-14 Girls high jump, Pranjali Patil in the U-16 Girls 100m hurdles event, Abhinash Kumar in the U-14 Boys long jump, Aparna Roy in the U-18 Girls 100m hurdles and Saurabh Rathi in the U-18 Boys decathlon.

Akashdeep of Punjab clocked 40.47.78 seconds to shatter the old national record of 41.29.85 seconds set by Satish K Patel. Juned Khan of Haryana (40.56.16s) and Arshdeep Singh of Punjab (43.40.33s) finished second and third, respectively.

Pawana, representing Karnataka, clinched the high jump gold medal with a record jump of 1.63m, bettering the old mark of 1.62m. Bidisha Kundu (1.61m) and Samiksha Adsule (1.40m) clinched the silver and bronze medal, respectively.

Meanwhile, in the U-16 girls 100m hurdles it was Pranjali Patil who clinched a gold
medal with a new national record of 14.36 seconds. Aparna created a new national record in the U-18 Girls category.

Abhinash Kumar also entered the record books with an effort of 6.84m in the
U-14 Boys long jump event and grabbed the gold medal. Mahesh Jadhav (6.10m) of Maharashtra settled for silver while local boy Rakesh Hansda (5.76m) got the bronze medal.

In the U-18 Boys decathlon event, Saurabh Rathi of Uttar Pradesh set a new national
record to grab the gold medal with 6955 points. Haryana’s Mohit bagged the silver
medal with 6511 points while Lalit of Manipur settled for bronze medal with 6276 points.

Punjab’s Baljit Kaur recorded a strong performance in the U-18 girl’s 5000m race walk
competition.

Haryana’s Rekha registered an impressive jump of 1.75m to claim the gold medal in the
U-20 Women’s high jump competition.