Thiruvananthapuram: Rajinder Singh smashed the national record in men’s javelin throw, while former Asian champion Renjith Maheshwary won his maiden National Games gold with a new meet record in triple jump, as the athletes arena continued to enthral on the penultimate day of the 35th National Games here on Thursday.
The Services Sports Control Board (SSCB) remained on top of the medals’ tally with a tally of 131 (81 gold, 23 silver and 27 bronze so far). Hosts Kerala displaced Haryana from the second spot with a total of 119 (34 gold, 37 silver and 48 bronze). Haryana are third with 33 gold, 37 silver and 22 bronze.
For Bengal, Kuldip Singh of Bengal ensured at least a silver in the men’s 75 kg boxing, when he reached the final. Bengal are assured of atleast two more silver medals, with boxers Devanshu (81 kg) and Vipin Kumar (56 kg) also in the title rounds.
The men’s rugby team also kept Bengal’s medal hopes alive with a 12-0 win over Delhi to reach the semi-finals.
Their women counterpart also advanced to the semi-finals, winning 29-5 against Tamil Nadu.
Amid a sea of meet records tumbling, a new national record was created when Haryana’s Rajinder Singh cleared 82.23m in javelin, to better the 80.72m mark of Anil Kumar Singh (2008).
SSCB’s Davinder Singh (75.34m) and Uttar Pradesh’s Vipin Kasana (75.18m) won the silver and bronze respectively.
Veteran long-distance runner Preeja Sreedharan bid adieu to the track with a 10,000m silver, even as another local lady O P Jaisha stole the limelight by collecting her second gold medal at the Games with a new meet record of 33:08.55sec. She had earlier won the 5,000m gold with a meet record.
Sreedharan clocked 34:58.85sec in her final race egged on by an enthusiastic crowd at University Stadium. Maharashtra’s Swati Gadhave had to be content with a bronze after finishing at 34:59.73sec.
Former Commonwealth Games bronze-medallist Renjith got over the disappointment of disqualification in men’s long jump by shattering the meet record in triple jump for a gold medal.
The 29-year-old, who won bronze medals in the past two National Games, cleared 16.66m to better the 16.62m record set by Arpinder Singh in the 2011 Games.
“I am very happy with how I performed and it has helped me put behind the bad memories of last year,” Renjith. The silver went to defending champion Arpinder (16.41m), while the bronze was clinched by SSCB’s Rakesh Babu (16.29m).
There was a massive upset in the men’s 400m hurdles when former Asian Games gold-medallist and the national and meet record holder Joseph Abraham was disqualified for a false start, leading to the crowning of a new champion in SSCB’s Durgesh Kumar, who won with a time of 50.66sec.
Anu Raghavan ensured that the capacity crowd had something to celebrate when she notched up the 400m women’s hurdles gold medal. Anu clocked 58.63sec to finish ahead of Haryana’s Santosh Kumari (59.63sec) and Kerala's VV Jisha (1:00.93sec).
In the women’s 100m hurdles, Tamil Nadu’s G Gayathry set a new mark, with a time of 13.66sec, to beat the previous mark of 13.81sec created by Anuradha Biswal in 2002. Karnataka’s Meghna Shetty (13.89sec) and Tamil Nadu’s Deepika (13.96) ended second and third respectively.
The men’s 110m hurdles meet record was also breached and it was hardly a surprise that it was SSCB’s Siddhant Thingalaya who did the honours.
Thingalaya, the reigning national champion and also the national record holder, clocked 13.83sec to beat the 14.10sec mark set by Gurpreet Singh in 2001. The silver in this event went to Tamil Nadu through Surendar, who also bettered the previous mark with a timing of 13.98sec, while Telangana’s Kuppusami Premkumar ended with a bronze after clocking 14.20sec.
SSCB stole the thunder from Kerala in the men’s high jump as well when Jitin Thomas cleared a new meet record of 2.16m to snatch the gold medal from local favourite Sreenith Mohan, who had to settle for silver despite a matching effort as he took a higher number of attempts to get there. Punjab’s Jagdeep Singh was third with an effort of 2.13m.
(PTI)
