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Neeraj Chopra continued his dominance in javelin throw as he smashed the meet record on his way to winning the gold medal at the 22nd Federation Cup Senior National Athletics Championships 2018 held at the National Institute of Sports (NIS) in Patiala, Punjab on Tuesday. Besides Chopra’s masterful show, shot putter Tejinder Pal Toor and quarter-miler Hima Das earned the highly-coveted Commonwealth Games (CWG) berths on Day 2 of this competition.
The 20-year-old Chopra, who is the 2016 under-20 world champion, eclipsed the old mark of 85.63m to achieve a distance of 85.94m on his final attempt that gave him the yellow metal. Uttar Pradesh thrower Amit Kumar was the second best with 79.16m and Shivpal Singh came third with 78.31m.
This was the second gold medal in as many weeks for Chopra. He reigned supreme at last week’s Indian Grand Prix and bagged the CWG berth as well in his first outing since his training stint in Germany.
Chopra’s performance was the talking point of the day for it was also the best throw ever recorded on Indian soil, besides being his second best throw.
Das steals the show
After veteran discus thrower Seema Punia qualified for the Commonwealth Games on the first day of the Fed Cup, Toor and Das became the second and the third Indians to earn Gold Coast tickets from this meet.
The 18-year-old Das’ achievement was the all more stunning, considering the 400m is not her forte. She primarily excels in the short sprints -- 100m and 200m -- and even has a gold medal from the Asian Games Test event held in Jakarta recently.
She moved to 400m just four month ago and the Fed Cup was her debut race. Despite being highly inexperienced, she came up trumps by finishing in 51.97 seconds. It not only gave her the top spot on the podium, but also a CWG spot as she met the Athletics Federation of India (AFI)’s criterion of 52 seconds.
Vijayakunari GK clocked 53.03 to finish behind Das and the 2014 Asian Games bronze medallist MR Poovamma came third with 53.38 seconds.
Shot putter Toor carried his form from the Asian Indoor Games in January, where he won the silver. By hurling the iron sphere to a distance of 20.24m, he grabbed the gold and a spot at the CWG as well for the AFI benchmark was 20.20m.
Long jumper Murali Sreeshankar came agonizingly close to a CWG spot only to fall short by just a solitary centimetre. The AFI had set their qualifying standard at 8.00m but the 18-year-old could only produce 7.99m, which itself was a junior record.
Siva Kumar of Tamil Nadu blitzed past a packed field that had the National Record Holder Amiya Mallick and Asian Indoor bronze medallist Elakkiya Dasan to clock 10.43 seconds in men’s 100m. It gave him a maiden national gold medal but wasn’t good enough for a CWG ticket as the bar was set at 10.16 seconds.
