Ram. Murali Krishnan for the IAAF
21 January 2001 – Bangalore - Seema Antil’s victory in last year’s World Junior Championship and the chance to gain a place in the national team for the ensuing Asian Junior Meet in Brunei have apparently motivated India’s junior athletes who rewrote 16 national and 22 meet records (in boys and girls age-groups) in the four-day national junior championship which concluded at Sree Kanteerava Stadium here yesterday.
Leading the national age-group records were two high jumpers, M. Sangeetha of Tamil Nadu and Omveer Singh from Rajasthan. M. Sangeetha, a student of SBOA Matriculation Higher Secondary School at Chennai, cleared the height of 1.68m for the second time within two weeks to establish the national age-group records for under-16 year old girls. She first cleared the height on January 6 while competed in the Pentathlon event during the Tamil Nadu state junior meet at Vellore.
The ‘hookha’ wielding Omveer Singh was in a centre of controversy during the last year’s championship at Salem as he continue to ‘smoke’ in between his jumps! However, at Bangalore, this unorthodox athlete sailed over 2.12m to better the National Junior (u-20) record by 1 cm.
Kerala’s P.S. Primesh had a splendid double with meet records in 400 (47.7m) and 800(1:52.50) in the junior men category wherein his team-mate Joseph G. Abraham bettered the 400m hurdles record with 52.90 secs. Tamil Nadu’s Divya Sukumaran equalled the girls u-16 national record in 100m hurdles with a time of 15.2 secs, whereas Chitra K. Soman of Kerala set a new mark in girls u-18 100m with 12.10s.
Monica Joon’s 40.38m in GU-16 discus throw and K.N. Priya’s 12.37m in GU-18 triple jump are the other noteworthy national marks. Tamil Nadu state team annexed the overall championship with 374 points from arch-rival Kerala (372).
