Haryana's Pooja sets U16 high jump national mark

GUWAHATI: Haryana's Pooja created a under-16 high jump national record while Sanyam too impressed in winning the U-20 men's shot put title in the 37th AFI National Junior Athletics Championships here on Tuesday.

Sanyam's winning effort of 19.10m in his opening attempt also enabled him to emerge as the best male athlete in his age group.

However, Pooja had the distinction of being the only one to claim a national record. She cleared 1.76m to improve on the 1.73m mark set by Pavana Nagaraj at the Sarusajai Stadium here last year. The others who won the best athlete awards were Shaili Singh (Uttar Pradesh) in U-20 women, Atul (Haryana) and Unnathi Aiyyappa (Karnataka) in U-18 men and women, Ommkar Prasad Nanda (Odisha) and Rezoana Mallick Heena (West Bengal) in U-16 boys and girls and Nishchay (Haryana) and Tanu Chaudhary (Uttar Pradesh) in the U-14 boys and girls.

On the final day of the championships which saw 39 finals across the four age groups, as many as six meet records were broken.