Harmilan and Aishwarya get double crowns
Participating in her very first Nationals, R. Vithya Ramraj of Tamil Nadu took home her third gold medal at the National Open Athletics Championship in Warangal after winning the women’s 400m hurdles with a time of 58.47 on Saturday. She also won the 200m and also the
4x400m mixed relay earlier.
“The track here is very good. Thanks to this track, I got my personal best in both 200m and
400m. I feel very proud that my parents are feeling very happy about me. The people of Warangal are very good. I heard there are many historical places here. I will go on a local tour on Sunday,” she said.
Harmilan Kaur Bains of Punjab, who broke the record for women’s 1500m during the tournament, called the Warangal track her lucky one after taking her second gold of the tournament in women’s
800m clocking 2:03.82. She outran Chanda (2:05.35) of Delhi and Rachna
(2:07.00) of Haryana. Mohammed Afsal P of Services, who sustained an ankle injury in January and missed the Federation Cup and District meets, kept his cool in the men’s 800m to take the gold in 1:48.39. Teammates Ankesh Chaudhary (1:48.58) and Krishan Kumar (1:48.77) shared the podium with him.
The 50km race walk too was won by the Services team with Resham Midhun (4:29:47), Sanabam Damen Singh
(4:33:32) and Anjani Kumar Singh (4:35:29) sweating it out till the end.
Kirpal Singh of ONGC put up an impressive show in the men’s discus throw with his best of
59.58m. Gagandeep Singh of Services was close with 58.32m and Abhinav of Haryana (56.18m) managed a third place finish.
In the women’s Javelin throw, Railways took the top two positions with Kumari Sharmila
(51.80m) and Rashmi K
(50.36m) crossing the 50m mark followed by Shilpa Rani of Haryana (47.83).