TN sprinters to the fore

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The battle between Kerala and Tamil Nadu for overall supremacy continued at the South Zone athletic championship here on Tuesday. Five meet records were rewritten at the Maharaja’s College track on the second day of the meet.

The hosts maintained their overnight leader status by finishing with a haul of 616.5 points with 36 gold, 24 silver and 36 bronze, while Tamil Nadu stayed close behind with 595 points from 35 gold, 29 silver and 20 bronze medals. Karnataka are third with 10 gold medals, followed by AP at five gold.

It appears K. T. Irfan’s national record breaking performance at the London Olympics has fired the imagination of walkers as two of the five meet records were set in race walking. Both walkers belonged to Kerala, the home state of Irfan.

Three of the meet records created on the penultimate day of the meet had a local flavour while an athlete each from Andhra and Tamil Nadu etched their names on the record books.

Binsy A. M. of Kerala broke a 10-year-old record of 27 min: 47sec in the 5km walk owned by C A Manjusha when she clocked 27 min: 10.7 sec in the under-18 category.

Local boy Arundev T. K. stopped the clock at 25 min: 23.3 sec bettering the previous mark of 25 min: 46 sec standing in the name of Jinu Thankappan set in 2011 in under-16 5,000m walking. Kerala’s Sinju Prakash broke K. C. Dija’s 2010 record of 3.30m in under-20 pole vault by one cm.

Andhra’s T. Hathi Reddy Gnana Prakash shattered Nikhil Neethin’s 13.61 m record from 2009 with a throw of 14.20 m in under-14 boys’ shot put. M. S. Arun of Tamil Nadu bettered the meet record in under-16 boys’ 100 m by breaking the previous mark of 11.04 sec set in 2011 by teammate B. Karthikeyan, by 0.01 seconds.

Selected results: Girls: Under-14 100 m: 1. K. Ramalakshmi (TN) 12.94 sec; 2. V. Tamilselvi (TN) 13.13 sec; 3. Rugma Udhayan (Kerala) 13.13 sec. Under-16 100 m: 1. C. Tina (TN) 12.88 sec; 2. Sneha Roy (Kerala) 12.97 sec; 3. A. Chandralekha (TN) 13.03 sec. Under-18 100 m: 1. Rengitha C. (Kerala) 12.5 sec; 2. Meghana Shetty (Karnataka) 12.69 sec; 3. Anju P. M. (Kerala) 12.86 sec. Under-18 5,000 m race walk: 1. Binsy A. M. (Kerala) 27 min:47; 2. Akshaya S. (Kerala) 29 min:6.71; 3. Prathiksha S. R. (Karnataka) 29 min:17.4. Under-20 100 m: 1. Bebi Sumaya (Karnataka) 12.13 sec; 2. S. Archana (TN) 12.38 sec; 3. Manju K. (Kerala) 12.6 sec. Under-20 pole vault: 1. Sinju Prakash (Kerala) 3.31 m; 2. Mithuna K. (Kerala) 2.90 m.

Boys: Under-14 shot put: 1. Hathi Reddy (Andhra) 14.20 m; 2. Sreehari Vishnu (Kerala) 12.71 m; 3. K. S. Adithyakarthikeyan (TN) 12.45m. Under-14 100 m: 1. M. Ajith Parthiban (TN) 11.84 sec; 2. Siva P. (Andhra) 11.93 sec; 3. V. Sibichakkaravarthi (TN) 11.98 sec. Under-16 100 m: 1. M. S. Arun (TN) 11.03 sec; 2. Nithin U. (Kerala) 11.68 sec; 3. B. Rambabu (Andhra) 11.68 sec. Under-16 5,000 race walk: 1. Arundev T. K. (Kerala) 25 min:23.3; 2. S. K. Jilani (Andhra) 27 min: 53.9; 3. K. Gandhi Reddy (Andhra) 28 min:4.85. Under-18 100 m: 1. Augustine Yesudas (TN) 10.91 sec; 2. S. Sudhakar (TN) 10.95 sec; 3. Jeris Jose (Kerala) 11.04 sec. Under-20 100 m: 1. V. Praveen Muthu (TN) 10.86 sec; 2. B. Suryanarayana (Andhra) 10.99 sec; 3. Mohammed Afeef Owaise (Karnataka) 11.03 sec.