Daman, Amit, Munita race walk champions

Ranchi, Feb. 16: Sanabam Daman Singh of Manipur won the men’s 50km race walk event on the second and final day of the National Championships here on Sunday.

The 30-year-old Singh won the event in 4 hours, 8 minutes and 10 seconds, well outside the Olympic qualification standard of three hours and 50 minutes.

Gurpreet Singh of Punjab, 35, was second with a timing of 4:09:44s while Anjani Singh (Uttar Pradesh) finished third clocking 4:22:37s.

Last year’s winner Jitendra Rathore (Rajasthan) and runner-up Sagar Joshi (Gujarat) were among the eight competitors who did not finish the gruelling race.

In the men’s Under-20 10km race walk event, Haryana’s Amit won the gold with a national record time of 40 minutes 28 seconds, bettering the earlier mark set by Akshdeep Singh in the National Junior Athletics Championships here in

2018.

He led a bunch of six athletes who breached the World Junior Athletics Championships qualification standard of 43:30s. Paramjeet Singh Bisht, Parveen Kumar, Vishvendra Singh, Sanjay Kumar and Bajrang Prajapati were the others who came home inside the junior worlds mark.

In the girls Under-20 10km race walk event, Munita Prajapati, 18, beat familiar rival Baljeet Kaur Bajwa and also achieved World Junior Athletics Championships qualification standard of 50:30s with a winning timing of 50:15.00s.

Punjab’s Baljeet Kaur finished one second slower than that world standard. The defending champion Roji Patel won bronze this time.