Before every throw, Tajinder Singh Toor borrowed a left shoe from his Punjab State-mate Navtejdeep Singh and went for his attempt. Was it some sort of lucky charm, one was curious to know.
“No, the circle was too slow, too rough, so I had to use his ‘fast’ shoe which can handle the rough area better,” explained shot putter Tajinder, the recent Asian Championships silver medallist, at the 57th National inter-State athletics championships here on Sunday evening.
The shoe helped but not as much as the Asian season leader Tajinder would have liked. The 22-year-old won the gold without any difficulty with a 19.46m effort but he was still far away from the 20.50m he desperately needed to qualify for the next month’s World Championships in London.
He had come very close, with a personal best 20.40m effort at the Federation Cup in Patiala last month. “There were a few complaints about the circle yesterday, so we had the event in another circle today,” Bahadur Singh, the chief national coach, told
Sportstar virtually throw up his hands with a ‘what can we do’ look.
With this being the last chance meet before the Worlds, athletes certainly deserved a better deal. Meanwhile Davinder Singh Kang, who had qualified for the Worlds earlier and who did not even figure in the startlist here, won the men’s javelin throw with a first round effort of 81.84m that broke the meet record by over two metres.
Odisha won a double in the 200m, through its stars Amiya Kumar Mallick and Srabani Nanda, while Kerala’s Jinson Johnson and the young Lili Das took the men’s and women’s 800m.
Kerala’s V. Neena, the Asians silver medallist, won the women’s long jump with 6.29m and despite the absence of her State-mate Nayana James, the bronze medallist in Bhubaneswar, there was a touch of glamour to the event with West Bengal’s Asian heptathlon champion Swapna Barman in the fray. Swapna finished with a bronze.
The results:
Men: 200m: 1. Amiya Kumar Mallick (Odi) 21.65s, 2. Vipin Kumar (Man) 21.85, 3. Parveen (Har) 22.01.
800m: 1. Jinson Johnson (Ker) 1:47.38s, 2. Manjit Singh (Har) 1:48.04, 3. Vishaamber (Kar) 1:48.64.
Long jump: 1. Y. Muhammed Anees (Ker) 7.60m, 2. P.V. Suhail (Ker) 7.55, 3. Siddanth Nayak (Kar) 7.41.
Javelin throw: 1. Davinder Singh Kang (Pun) 81.84m MR, OR 79.67, Jagdish Bishnoi, 2000; 2. Ravinder Singh Khaira (Pun) 74.71, 3. Amit Kumar (UP) 74.43.
Shot put: 1. Tajinderpal Singh Toor (Pun) 19.46m, 2. Jasdeep Singh (Pun) 18.48, 3. Navtejdeep Singh (Pun) 17.61.
20km race walk: 1. Sandeep Kumar (Har) 1:27:01.52s, 2. Jitendra Singh (Raj) 1:27:04.32, 3. Baljinder Singh (Pun) 1:29:38.72.
Decathlon: 1. Dayaram (Raj) 6788 pts, 2. Ankit Saini (Har) 6651), 3. Theivendran (TN) 6512.
Women : 200m: 1. Srabani Nanda (Odi) 24.18s, 2. Anwesha Roy Pradhan (WB) 24.37, 3. Sonia Baisya (WB) 24.85.
800m: 1. Lili Das (WB) 2:03.46s, 2. Abitha Mary Manuel (Ker) 2:06.19, 3. Sipra Sarkar (WB) 2:07.48.
Long jump: 1. V. Neena (Ker) 6.29m, 2. Priyanka Kerketta (Jhar) 6.01, 3. Swapna Barman (WB) 6.00.
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