Inter-State meet: Podium sweep for Tamil Nadu in women’s pole vault

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu’s Baranica Elangovan created a meet record in the women’s pole vault event on the opening day – Friday – of the National Inter-State Senior Athletics Championships at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium here.

The 25-year-old Baranica cleared 4.05 metres to erase Khyati Vakharia’s four-year-old meet record and steal the limelight in humid conditions. She went for V Surekha’s eight-year-old national record of 4.15m, but failed to better it. Host Tamil Nadu swept all three medals with Rosy Meena Paulraj (4m) and Pavithra Venkatesh (3.90m) clinching silver and bronze respectively.

National record-holding long jumper M Sreeshankar (Kerala) also created a new meet record in the qualification round. He topped the chart with an impressive 8.01m effort, thereby bettering the meet record of 8m that was set by Prem Kumar in the 2013 edition here. Kerala’s Muhammed Anees Yahiya was second with 7.85m while Jeswin Aldrin of Tamil Nadu came up with a jump of 7.71m.

Only three finals were held on Friday, with the other two being the men’s and women’s 10,000m races. Maharashtra’s Sanjivani Jadhav, who had served a two-year doping ban till June 2020, won the women’s 10,000m race comfortably, with a timing of 33 minutes, 16.43 seconds in the morning session.

Her timing was well outside the Athletics Federation of India’s (AFI) Commonwealth Games selection standard of 31:25.00. Sanjivani’s statemate Prajakta Godbole was second in 33:59.34 seconds while Kavita Yadav of Uttar Pradesh took bronze in 35:00.33.

The timings of the men’s 10,000m podium finishers were also mediocre with Abhishek Pal of Uttar Pradesh clinching gold in 29:55.51, much below the AFI CWG standard of 27:30.90. Another UP athlete, Gurveer Singh, was second in 29:55.71 while Rajasthan’s Dharmender bagged the bronze medal with a timing of 29:55.84.

Meanwhile, Dutee Chand (Odisha) and Hima Das (Assam) were among the eight finalists in women’s 100m after two semi-final heats. Veteran Odisha sprinter Srabani Nanda (11.49s), however, beat Hima (11.54s) to the top spot in the first semi-final heat. Dutee clocked 11.40s to win the other semi-final heat. The AFI’s CWG qualifying mark is 11.31s.

All the top women quarter-milers, including Rupal Choudhary (Uttar Pradesh), Kiran Pahal (Haryana) and Priya Mohan (Karnataka), made it to the final. In men’s 400m, Noah Nirmal Tom and Amoj Jacob (both Kerala) won the semi-final heats in 46.14s and 46.27s respectively. National record holder Muhammed Anas Yahiya also qualified for the final, finishing second behind Jacob in their heat in 46.48s.

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