Indian Athletics – 10th National Youth Athletics Championships Day 1 – Shakti Solanki ruled again with a big toss – / By Ram. Murali Krishnan /

Guntur, Andhra Pradesh – 18 May 2013 – Shot putter Shakti Solanki extends his winning-streak one more time as he won his first-ever title in the youth (under-18) division on the first day of 10th National Youth Athletics Championships commenced at Brahmananda Reddy Stadium here on Saturday.

The family tradition helped Shakti maintaining supremacy at throwing arena as his elder brother Ashwini Solanki is also a noted shot putter at the national level.   Although the 17-year-old Delhi boy keeps winning national titles since 2010, he made it a big one at Guntur with his stupendous toss of 19.09m on the final round this evening with the 5 kg iron ball, which places his sixth on the World Youth lists for the current season.

The athletes competing in the Youth Nationals here are having the main ambition to attain qualification for the World Youth Championships to be held in Donetsk, Ukraine, in July and Asian Youth Games at Nanjing, China, thereafter.

The qualifying mark for the boys' shot put stands at 17.70m and Shakti Solanki stands a good chance to make the podium in both the competitions mentioned above.

Another athlete who attracts much attention here was the meet and national record-holder in sprint events for girls, Dutee Chand from Odisha.  Having already achieved the qualifying standards with her performances of 11.93 secs in 100m and 24.28 secs in 200m during the National junior championships at Lucknow in last October, it was only a confirmatory wins for her in Guntur.  She proved it in style with a 11.85s in 100m dash, aided by a tail wind of 3.4 metres per second.  Her margin of victory – 0.53 secs – was huge once again!

Haryana lad Mohit was fastest among the boys as he overcame the scorching heat to win in 11.08 secs.  However two Tamil Nadu boys, who had better timings than Mohit to their credit, B.Karthikeyan (11.07s) and M.S. Arun (11.09s) have become victims for the high humidity and hostile weather conditions, hence could not reach the evening's finals.

 Maharashtra shot putter Meghna Devanga clinched the gold for girls heaving the 3 kg iron ball to 13.50m-the exact distance set as a qualifying standard for Donetsk-while Punjab's Manpreet Kaur was 27 cm behind in spite of more number of 13m plus throws.

 It was indeed a good opening for the Maharashtrians as the first gold of the meet went to Sanjivani Jadhav in 3,000m early this morning.  Started her career as a wrestler, Sanjivani had taken part in both wrestling and athletics at School Nationals.  Maharashtra produced many notable distance runners in the past which includes Lukose Leelamma and Kavita Raut as well as the famous sisters Monika and Rohini in recent times.

 The North Eastern State of Assam also returning to winning ways with two gold medals in boys' distance running through Ajay Kumar Saroji (1500m) and Abhishek Pal (3000m).

 Athletes from Tamil Nadu were 1-2 in girls' long jump while Haryana's Preet Rani pushed TN girl Mahalakshmi to second place in the discus throw.

At the end of first day, Haryana leading the table with 38 points while Uttar Pradesh (36) and Kerala (23) closely followed them.

 / Ram. Murali Krishnan /

Results Day 1 |