India's Priyanka Mondal clocked a personal best time while progressing to the girls' 400m semifinals of the IAAF World youth athletics championship which began at Lille, France, on Wednesday.
The 17-year-old National youth champion from West Bengal clocked 56.27s (previous best 57.20s) while finishing sixth in her heat. Apart from the top three from six heats, the six fastest losers too qualified for Thursday's semifinals and Priyanka was one of them.
Haryana's Sachin Singh failed to progress to the boys' discus final despite posting a personal best 54.67m (previous best 53.32) which carried him to the sixth spot in his qualifying group. Colombia's Mauricio Ortega topped the qualifying round with 61.78m while German Spindler Philipp, with 55.34m, took the last berth.
Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu's P. Anburaja, who won the youth National gold at Ranchi in May with a personal best 7.28m, managed only 6.81m in the boys' long jump qualifiers and failed to progress. He finished 15th in the 17-member Group ‘B'.
Spain's Sergio Acera and China's Lin Qing, both with 7.49m, topped the list of qualifiers for the final.
Kerala's Jijin Vijayan, the fastest boy at the Ranchi National, also fell in the first round of the 100m, finishing sixth after clocking 11.38m.
Australian Hugh Donovan was the fastest with 10.60s while Singapore's Chan Donovan Zhiyuan was the slowest qualifier to the semifinal with 11.03s.
