Junior athletics: Throwers Sachin, Navjeet set national records

Emerging shot put star Sachin hurled the shot put to a superb 58.11 metres to send the record book keeper into a tizzy at the 12th Federation Cup Junior National Athletics Championship here Saturday.

The 18-year-old's performance shot him into the limelight with a national record. Sachin erased the existing record of Punjab's Kripal Singh by just one cm and also jumped to the top spot in the current Asian Junior ranking and 11th in the world.

The Haryana youngster will be watched with plenty of anticipation in the forthcoming Asian Junior Championships and World Junior Championship, for whom he qualified thanks to his national record.

Rajasthan's Praveen Kumar missed the qualifier when finishing second with 54.76m while another Haryana lad Nirbhay Singh settled for the bronze with a throw of 52.69m.

Punjab girl Navjeet Kaur Dhillon, who finished ninth in the senior Asian Championships at Pune last year (where she finished seventh in discus throw), was the cynosure of all eyes as she improved upon her state-mate Manpreet Kaur's six year old national junior record.

Incidentally her record - 15.89m - also came in the first round. Having pocketed the gold and satisfied the new mark, Navjeet skipped the remaining rounds and encouraged her teammate Manpreet Singh Jr, who grabbed the silver medal with 13.53m. Uttarakhand's Ramanpreet Kaur was third with 13.50m.

Decathlete Ankit Saini become the second athlete from Haryana to qualify for the Asian Junior Championships as she garnered 6,600 points to achieve it and also improved the meet mark that stood in the name of Bhupinder Singh of Punjab since 2006 by 23 points.

Hosts Tamil Nadu dominated the sprint relay event and captured both the gold medals that were at stake. The junior women team comprising of Dhanalakshmi, Deepika, Vinodini and Archana improved upon Karnataka's 13-year-old meet mark clocking a new time of 48.25 secs.

Earlier, Deepika added another gold medal to her kitty, clinching the 100m hurdles title while Dhanalakshmi bagged the bronze. Silver medallist, Karnataka's Meghana Shetty clocked 14.28 secs to book a berth in the national team for the Asian Junior Championships.

Kerala hurdler Nasimudheen expectedly had won the 110m hurdles in 14.35 secs.