The Indian contingent made a great start as Pooja, Siddharth Choudhary, and Abinaya Rajarajan claimed gold medals with record-breaking performance in their respective events on the opening day of the South Asian Junior Athletics Championship at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Chennai on Wednesday.
It was 1-2 in the women’s 100m sprint for the Indian team with Abinaya and V Sudheeksha taking the top two spots. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka won gold and silver in the men’s 100m dash. Meet records were also broken in both men and women’s 100m race.
Pooja comfortably won gold at 1.80m, which was better than the previous meet record of 1.75m. She made efforts to improve her national U-20 high jump record of 1.83m set recently in Peru at the 2024 World Athletics U-20 meet, but failed to cross the bar at 1.84m.
On his way to gold in men’s shot put, Siddharth Choudhary hurled the iron ball to a distance of 19.19m, a meet record. The previous record stood at 18.53m.
Compatriot Anurag Singh Kaler won silver with a distance of 18.91m. Away from the field events, Sri Lanka dominated the middle distance events.
‘Plan to have senior SAAF championships every two years’
The fourth edition of South Asian Junior Athletics Championship being held under the aegis of South Asian Athletics Federation (SAAF) will give more opportunity to athletes at the regional level, Lalit Bhanot, president of SAAF said on the sidelines of the competition.
“Regional competitions have its advantage as competitors will have to travel less and at the same time get good competition close to home,” Bhanot said.
“All seven SAAF countries are competing here in Chennai,” he added. “More regional events will be conducted in future.”
Next month the senior SAAF athletics meet will be held in Ranchi, Jharkhand. The 2024 SAAF cross country will be held in Pakistan. “The dates of the cross country will be finalised shortly,” Bhanot said.
“There is a plan to organise a senior SAAF competition every two years.”
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