National Junior Athletics Championship: Telangana's G Maheshwari creates national record in U-20 3000m steeplechase

Guntur: Telangana’s G Maheshwari on Wednesday created the sole national record on the final day of the 35th National Junior Athletics Championships here, winning the girls U-20 3000m steeplechase title here. Her time of 10:34.10 was 12.71 seconds faster than her previous best in the event. Running a race of her own, as the other competitors were fighting for the second spot, Maheshwari easily bettered the earlier national junior record of 10:53.91 which was set by Nandini Gupta in Lucknow in 2017. [caption id=“attachment_4033491” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Getty[/caption] The host state’s Nalubothu Shanmuga Srinivas stunned the boys under-18 200m field with a blistering run. His time of 21.34 seconds was a meet record, clipping 0.16 seconds off the time set by Nisar Ahmed in Ranchi last year. Karnataka’s VA Shashikanth settled for the runner-up spot like he had in the 100m on November 3. Nalubothu Shanmuga Srinivas and Shashikanth were faster than the boys under-20 200m winner Abhin V Devadiga (Karnataka). The day’s other meet record came from Uttarakhand’s Ankita in the 1500m in the girls under-18 division. On a day when national record holder Tai Hiraman Bamhane (Maharashtra) finished a distant third, Ankita was pushed by Haryana’s Pooja. Ankita finished in 4:28.20 to erase Lili Das’ name from the record books. Lili Das had timed 4:35.40 in Ranchi in 2015. Pratiksha Patel (Uttar Pradesh) came up with a new meet record in girls under-16 Javelin Throw with a 43.08m effort, breaking the old mark of 41.24 set by Jyoti in 2017). Ramyashree Jain (Karnataka) also went past Jyoti’s mark while taking second place with 41.33m in a fine duel with Pratiksha Patel. Among the more familiar names, boys under-20 triple jumper Praveen Chithravel (Tamil Nadu) needed to bring his best off the final jump to win the gold and redeem himself. Lying third with a best effort of 15.38 after five rounds, he produced a jump of 15.85m to beat Gailey Venister (Andhra Pradesh) and Aravinth E (Tamil Nadu) and clinch the title.