Patiala, 7 Aug : After seven years of rigorous training Siddhanth Thingalaya achieved what others in his age could not have dreamt off—the senior national title—as he put to shade the previous national record in men’s 110m hurdles with an amazing 13.81 secs clocking on the third day of National Inter-State Athletics Championships at NSNIS grounds, Moti Bagh.
Siddhanth (19) already was in limelight after having won the inter-university title at Kochi, two years ago. A second year B.Com student in Mithibai College, Mumbai, he went on to win a silver medal in the Asian junior championships at Hanoi (Vietnam) last month, before making an exposure trip to Moncton, Canada, for the World juniors.
He had a training stint at South Africa under the Mittal Champions Trust and clocked 14.31 secs at the high altitude Potchefstroom in March this year. “For the past four months I have been receiving training from Mr. Ajit Kulkarni in Balewadi and travel all the way to Pune in weekends from my home at Andheri which helped me to great extent” Siddhanth revealed after the event as he improved his personal best in both heats (14.20) and finals (13.81) today.
The coach praised his prodigy for dedication and suggests that he need specialized training from abroad to become a medalist in a global competition like the Olympic Games. About his chances to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games, Siddhanth admits that he need to put more hard work and improve further in his timings.
His margin of victory in today’s race was remarkably impressive as Tamil Nadu’s P. Muthusamy and Punjab’s Amandeep Singh took the next two spots with an identical 14.46 secs.
After losing a podium finish in yesterday’s triple jump, Gayathri Govindaraj made a brave effort to win the women’s 100m hurdles with a time of 13.71 secs. M.M. Anchu, representing Jharkhand, and national record holder Anuradha Biswal from Orissa have taken the next two places with timings of 14.13 and 14.33 secs respectively.
Hosts Punjab received two more gold medals through Maha Singh in long jump (7.74m) and men’s 4x100m relay team (41.56 secs). Tamil Nadu jumpers B. Azarudeen (7.64) and B. Baskar (7.59) had won the silver and bronze medals whereas the favourite Ankit Sharma fromMadhya Pradesh, who won the recent Asian All-Stars Meet at New Delhi, finished fifth with a performance of 7.51m. Ankit got a bronze in the Asian junior meet this year with a personal best 7.77m leap.
Sandeep of Haryana clinched the gold in men’s 1500m (3:43.39) from Kerala’s Chatholi Hamza (3:45.10). The other prominent winners of the day are Kavya Muthanna of Karnataka in women’s high jump (1.80m), Gajanan Upadhyay of Jharkhand in men’s pole vault (4.90m) and S. Saraswathy of Tamil Nadu in women’s javelin throw (50.29m).