Not even in her wildest dreams did Rubina Yadav imagine she would be doing the sort of high jumps that she came up with on Thursday at the Acharya Nagarjuna University Stadium here.
The 16-year-old from Rewadi in Haryana jolted Kerala’s senior National champion Gayathry Sivakumar and went over the under-20 girls’ National record while pocketing her maiden gold at the National junior athletics championships at Mangalagiri.
Rubina, who landed here with a personal best 1.76m, stunningly raised it to 1.81m and nailed the under-18 gold.
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“I did not expect this at all, I thought I would do only 1.78m,” said Rubina, who had lost to Gayathry twice in the past.
The event was loaded with drama. Gayathri, who has a personal best of 1.79m which made her the country’s best junior jumper till Rubina’s fireworks here, takes a long run-up which stretches onto the track and thus she had to suffer frequent interruptions after clearing 1.71m as the 400m heats had also started by then.
And once, while going for 1.73, the Kochi girl nearly clashed with a 400m runner who took off without any warning just before his event began.
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The results (winners only):
Boys: Under-20: 1500m: Abhinandh Sundaresan (Ker) 3:54.84s. 5000m: Kisan Tadvi (Mah) 14:42.36s. Shot put: Ashish Bhalothia (Har) 18.50m.
Under-18: 1500m: Ankit (AFI) 3:56.90s. High jump: Gurjeet Singh (Har) 2.04m. Discus: Aniket Kala (Utr) 54.15m. Javelin: Yashvir Singh (Har) 69.83m.
Under-16: 2000m: Amit Jangid (Raj) 5:37.25s. High jump: Ajay Sagar (Kar) 1.97m.
Under-14: Long jump: Avinash Kumar (Bih) 6.79m ( NR , OR: 6.63). Triathlon: Shivang Meena (Del) 1779 pts.
Girls: Under-20: 1500m: Sukhwant Kaur (Raj) 4:42.08s. 5000m: Kavita Yadav (UP) 18:56.15s.
Under-18: 1500m: Suman Rani (AFI-Pun) 4:44.78s. High jump: Rubina Yadav (Har) 1.81m ( NR , OR: Swapna Barman 1.71; Gayathry Sivakumar, Ker, 1.71 ER).
Under-16: 2000m: Ankita Dhyani (Utr) 6:36.83s. Long jump: P.S. Prabhvathi (Ker) 5.58m. Javelin: Jyoti (Har) 41.24m ( NR , OR: 39.69). Discus: Pooja (Har) 39.29m.
Under-14: Shot put: Bharti (Har) 11.35m. Triathlon: Srusthi Shetty (Mah) 1694 pts.