Gailey Venister Devasahayam, a former high jumper, shocked National Open champion Praveen Chithravel and won the triple jump with a personal best 16.20m in the National under-23 athletics championships here on Wednesday.
While Praveen, who hit a personal best 16.88m at the National Open, had a foul-ridden series with just one legal jump, Gailey was in his best form with all his four legal jumps going over his previous best of 15.55m.
“I didn’t come thinking that I should beat somebody, I just wanted to do something like 16.30m and came close to that,” said the 21-year-old Gailey from Tiruchi, who is coached by former national high jump record-holder N. Annavi, his wife Suganthi and son Mothi Arun.
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Later, sprinter Taranjeet Kaur and distance runner Komal Jagdale completed a double each.
The results:
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Women, 200m: 1. Taranjeet Kaur (Del) 23.57s; 2. A.T. Daneshwari 23.73; 3. Ancy Sojan 24.32. 800m: 1. K.M. Chanda (Del) 2:03.40s; 2. K.M. Deeksha 2:04.62; 3. Radha Chaudhary 2:06.00. 10,000m: 1. Sonika (Har) 35:42.36; 2. Kavita Yadav 36:25.19; 3. Chatru Gumnaram 37:20.79. 3,000m steeplechase: 1. Komal Jagdale (Mah) 9:51.76s; 2. Kajal Sharma 10:47.18; 3. Rebi Pal 10:50.42.
400m hurdles: 1. Nanhi (Har) 59.58s; 2. Sinchal 1:00.04; 3. Gurdeep Kaur 1:00.31. Triple jump: 1. Sandra Babu (Ker) 13.11m; 2. Sharvari Parulekar 12.88; 3. R. Aishwarya 12.74. Hammer: 1. Shital (Har) 54.21m; 2. Sneha Jadhav 52.02; 3. Kashish Singh 51.79. Heptathlon: 1. Sonu Kumari (Har) 4,889 points; 2. Kajal 4686; 3. Pooja 4618 .