Tamil Nadu’s Sreekiran Nandakumar shocked Uttarakhand’s Asian junior champion Anu Kumar and won the boys’ 800m gold with a personal best time of 1:50.93s at the Youth Olympics Games’ Asian area athletics qualification meet in Bangkok on Thursday.
With Anu Kumar taking the silver in 1:51.13, it was a happy one-two for India but since only one Youth Olympics (YOG) qualification quota is allotted to a country in each event, the junior Asian champion will miss the Games to be held in Buenos Aires in October.
Read: Hima and Sreeshankar in Indian team for under-20 Worlds
India also won four silver medals, through Delhi’s Radha Chaudhary in the girls’ 800m, Kerala’s 400m hurdler Vishnu Priya, HP’s Seema in girls 3000m and Uttarakhand’s Suraj Pawar Soren in the boys’ 10,000m race walk but only the last three got YOG spots.
Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu’s Praveen Chithravel was way below his best of 16.22m as he finished fourth in the boys triple jump with 15.51 but still got a Buenos Aires ticket as Asia had four berths in the event.
Delhi’s Nisar Ahmad, who finished fifth in the boys’ 200m in 22.16s, also bagged a lucky berth as two Chinese athletes finished above him.
Comments
SHARE