National Junior Athletics Championships 2023: Kuldeep Kumar clinches gold, breaks national record in pole vault

Published at :November 9, 2023 at 4:23 AM

Modified at :January 14, 2024 at 1:01 AM

(Courtesy : Twitter)

Haryana’s Bhawna also set a new junior national record in women’s 100m sprint.

Day 2 of National Junior Athletics Championships 2023 saw many youngsters break meet and junior national records. Jithin Arjunan from Tamil Nadu started the proceedings in the morning session by breaking the national record in men’s U-16 long jump by registering 7.35m. The earlier record was set Pankaj Verma at 7.27m in 2018.

In the U-18 section of the same event, Mohd Sazid registered an impressive 7.62m in his last jump to clinch the top spot. He was followed by Bala Jeeva from Tamil Nadu who secured 7.31m; tad below than his personal best performance of 7.45m in the inter-state athletics meet.

Later in the day, Kuldeep Kumar after winning the silver medal at National Games 2023, rose up to breach the World U-20 Championships 2024 qualifying mark of 5.05m and created a new national record by jumping 5.17m. The national record was earlier in the name of Dev Meena who clinched gold in National Games. Kuldeep by securing gold broke the meet record twice and created a new national record.

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He was then aiming to create senior national record by setting the bar at 5.32m but couldn’t progress in the next three attempts. Moving to the track events, Bhawna and Anurag CV emerged as the fastest athletes in the 100m sprint event.

The former broke the national record created by Dutee Chand by clocking 11.50 seconds. On the other hand, Anurag went past the meet record but couldn’t break the national record set by Gurinder Vir Singh at 10.35 seconds.

Both Bhawna and Anurag went below World U-20 Championships 2024 qualifying marks in 100m events. The qualifying mark for men’s 100m is set at 11.55 seconds while for women’s it is 11.78 seconds.

The men’s 400m title was bagged by Karnataka’s CH Rihan who clocked 46.95 seconds. In the women’s section Anushka Kumbhar secured the top spot by clocking 55.15 seconds.