Haryana’s Ashish Jakhar on Friday set a national youth record in boys’ hammer throw on the second day of the 12th National Youth Athletics Championships here.
Ashish hurled the 5kg ball-and-chain to a new distance of 71.92m on his opening throw and went on to improve it further to 72.04m to stamp his class with fine rotations on the circle to set the first national record of the meet.
The previous national record had stood in the name of Haryana’s Sukhdev Singh (70.35m) since 2009.
Only Chinese thrower Xu Wenjie has a better mark than Ashish in the Asian rankings, with a 72.35m throw, so far this season.
Miraj Ali of Uttar Pradesh took the silver with a 68.35m throw in the meet which also serves as the selection trials for the inaugural Asian Youth Championships in Doha next month.
Meanwhile, Bandana Patel grabbed the gold in the girls’ 5,000m race walk event with an upset win over Priyanka Patel, who had bagged the yellow metal in the youth category of the Junior Nationals in Vijayawada last year.
Bandana exhibited her skills to increase the pace gradually and move ahead as she approached the home stretch to finish the race in 26 minutes and 36.15 seconds. Kerala girl G. Nisha also overtook Priyanka in the last 200m for the silver position in 26:41.53. Priyanka clocked 26:43.87 to finish third.
