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Veteran discus thrower Seema Punia made a sizzling return to form by bagging the gold medal and a Commonwealth Games (CWG) berth at the 22nd Federation Cup Senior National Athletics Championships held at the National Institute of Sports (NIS) Patiala on Monday. Punia threw the disc to a distance of 61.05m that fetched her the yellow metal.
It also gifted her a ticket to Gold Coast after meeting the Athletics Federation of India (AFI)’s criterion of 59m as she aims to add a fourth medal from the Commonwealth Games. The 34-year-old already has two silver medals from 2006 and 2014 and a bronze from 2010 and has set her sights on changing the colour of the medal this time.
The Uttar Pradesh thrower also shattered the earlier meet record of 60.95m set by Neelam J Singh in 2002.
Navjeet Kaur Dhillon, who stood first at last week’s Indian Grand Prix, finished a distant second with a throw of 57.75m and Kirandeep Kaur came third with 46.08m.
For Punia, who was struggling with shoulder and kidney issues last year, this was a confidence-boosting performance ahead of the mega multi-sporting event. Her best of 2017 was a dismal 54.11 that she managed at the Asian Championships but at the Fed Cup, she was very much on song and crossed the qualifying mark a couple of times out of the stipulated six.
In the other finals of the day, Siva Subramani leapt to a height of 5.15m in men’s pole vault to grab the gold. It was a new national record as well as a new meet record as he bettered his own height of 5.14m but it was nowhere close to AFI’s Commonwealth Games qualifying standard of 5.45m.
In men’s 5000m, Govindan Lakshmanan blitzed past the existing record of 13:49.17 set by Kheta Ram in 2014 to finish in 13:47.28 seconds. However, he failed to accomplish the CWG benchmark of 13:25.00.
His sister L Suriya ran to the gold in women’s 5000m with a timing of 15:46.96 which wasn’t good enough for a CWG berth in this category. She would now target a spot in the 10000m, which is her forte.
Day 2 of this meet is packed with 11 finals out of which all eyes will be on javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra. The 20-year-old, who is the 2016 world u-20 champion, will be coming to this event after a stellar show at last week’s Indian Grand Prix, where he won the gold and qualified for the Commonwealth Games.
