Harmilan, Aishwarya clinch double crowns

B Aishwarya of Railways bagged a horizontal-jump double by winning the triple jump less than 24 hours after coming up trumps in the long jump event. To her credit, she won both the competitions with best efforts of the year by an Indian woman jumper.

Aishwarya edged out Renu Grewal of Haryana by 4cm to double her joy. There was jubilation for Services when its athletes swept all podium places in the men’s 800m and the gruelling 50km race walk. Mohammed Afsal showed lasting power to edge out Ankesh Chaudhary and Krishan Kumar in the 800m final.

There was more good news for the Services camp as pole vaulter S Siva improved on his own meet record, raising it to 5.12m from the 5.10m that he had cleared in Ranchi in October 2019.