National Inter-State athletics: Dhanlakshmi Sekar pips Hima Das to take 200m gold

Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], June 15 (ANI): Dhanalakshmi Sekar defeated Hima Das to clinch a gold medal in the women's 200m race at the National Inter-State Athletics Championships 2022 at the Nehru Stadium here on Tuesday.
Dhanalakshmi Sekar won gold in the strong 200m final with a time of 23.27s on the last day of the meet. Hima Das settled for silver, clocking 23.29s while Aishwarya Kailash Mishra recorded 23.72s to win bronze. Srabani Nanda's 23.75s and Priya Mohan clocked 24.01s finished fourth and fifth, respectively.
The men's 200m gold, on the other hand, was grabbed by the national record holder Amlan Borgohain, who completed his course in 21.00s. Abhin B Devadiga clocked 21.42s to win silver while Rahul Ramesh Kadam finished at 21.68s and bagged bronze.
Tamil Nadu's Praveen Chithravel rewrote the Meet Record with a Triple Jump effort over 17.18m, third-best by an Indian, on an action-packed final day of the SNJ 61st National Inter-State Athletics Championships. He improved on Arpinder Singh's meet mark of 17.14m set in Lucknow eight years ago.
India's season leader Abdulla Aboobacker ensured that it would be a high-octane final by charging himself up to hop, step and jump to 17.14m on his fifth try. That prompted Praveen, who had passed his fifth jump, to return to the runway but he recorded a third foul. Abdulla Aboobacker tried hard but managed 16.98m on his final attempt.
It was the second time inside a month that two Indians had crossed the 17m in the same competition. Abdulla Aboobacker (17.19m) and his Kerala team-mate Karthik Unnikrishnan (17.10m) had achieved that in the Indian Grand Prix in Bhubaneswar on May 21. Karthik finished fourth on Tuesday, managing a best effort of 16.47 while Eldhose Paul took bronze.
There was considerable attention on the women's Long Jump competition after B Aishwarya (Karnataka) had caused a flutter in the qualifying round with a leap of 6.73m and broken the National Record for women's Triple Jump 24 hours earlier. Despite fouling five tries, she marked 6.60m in her only legal jump to claim gold ahead of Kerala's Ancy Sojan and L Sruthilekshmi. World U20 silver medalist Shaili Singh (Uttar Pradesh) was fourth with 6.26m.
Having tasted a rare defeat at the hands of Sarita Romit Singh in the Federation Cup in April this year, Manju Bala Singh (Rajasthan) returned to the Hammer Throw circle to assert her superiority with a 64.19m which was not only the best by an Indian woman this season and a new Meet Record but also passed the Commonwealth Games qualifying mark.
Tamil Nadu's Vithya Ramraj came up with a personal best time of 57.08 seconds to win the women's 400m Hurdles gold. MP Jabir (Kerala) claimed top honours in the men's 400m Hurdles in 49.76 seconds. (ANI)