Deepika guides Jharkhand to twin gold in archery

Meet records were shattered on the very first day of track and field competition, while former Commonwealth and Asian Games medallist archer Deepika Kumari steered Jharkhand to a couple of gold medals in the recurve team events on the eighth day of competitions in the 35th National Games, here today.
In the overall standings, SSCB, aiming for a third successive team title, were perched firmly at the top of the table with a total of 81 medals -- 50 gold, 16 silver and 15 bronze. Maharashtra remained second on account of lesser gold medals with a total tally of 95 (27 gold, 39 silver and 29 bronze), followed by Haryana (27 gold, 18 silver and 7 bronze).

The highlight of the day was the athletics competition, which started today, and the packed University Stadium did not have to wait long for records to start tumbling, the icing on the cake being a home favourite doing the honours.
OP Jaisha outran some of the more fancied names to clock 15:31.37 sec and grab the gold with a new meet record, breaching the 15:54.26 sec mark set by defending champion Kavita Raut in the previous edition of the Games.
The 31-year-old Jaisha, who was a 5000m bronze-medallist at the 2006 Doha Asian Games, steered clear of her challengers for most part of the race and finished ahead of Maharashtra's Lalita Babar (15:46.73sec) and Swati Gadhave (16:26.06sec) respectively.

It was disappointment for the retiring Sreedharan, who holds the national record in this event, as she ended fourth with a timing of 16:59.99 sec in the first of her two swansong races -- the other being 10,000m. Raut, on the other hand, could not even finish the race.

A new meet mark was also set in the 5000m men's race when SSCB's G Lakshman went past the finish line in 13:50.05sec to better Soji Matthews' timing of 14:11.99sec, clocked in the previous Games.
Maharashtra's Mohammed Younis (14:13.56sec) won the silver ahead of another SSCB man Man Singh (14:15.14sec).
However, there was some heartbreak as well for the hosts when former Asian Championships gold-medallist long jumper Renjith Maheshwary failed to make the finals after being disqualified for false starts in the heats this morning.