The last-ditch effort of Uttar Pradesh's Ranvijay Singh to obtain a berth in the Athens Olympics team ran into rough weather as he failed to attain the 'A' quota qualification by just 0.04 metres even as the lanky Kerala high jumper Bobby Aloysious stole the thunder achieving the berth with a career best clearance of 1.91 metres in the 44th Inter State National Athletics Championships in Chennai on Sunday evening.
With Bahadur Singh having booked a berth the focus was on Shakthi Singh to achieve the required mark in the shot put. But Ranvijay upset the rhythm of Shakti Singh of Haryana by heaving the iron ball to 20.26 metres, which was just 0.04 metres short of the mandatory 20.30 metres for the Athens Games qualifying (A) standard. His effort won him the first place while Navpreet Singh of Punjab (19.93 metres) and Shakti Singh (Har) 19.47 metres won the silver and bronze medals respectively.
Soon after winning the gold medal, Rajvijay was a totally shattered and expressed confidence that he would still go for it in the domestic meet on July 23 in Bangalore, the last chance for athletes to attain the required Olympic qualifying mark.
Results:
Men
100 metres: 1 Piyush Kumar (Del) 10.44 secs, 2. R Sreenivasan (MP) 10.72 secs, 3. Ganesh Satpute (Mah) 10.73 secs.
1500 metres: 1. Pritam Bind (Uttran) 3:54.27 sog'Souza (AP) 3:54.71 secs; 3. Binesh Soman (Ker) 3:55.28 secs.
10,000 metres: 1. Santosh Kumar (UP) 31:49.06 secs; 2. Soji Mathew (Ker) 31:49.63 secs; 3. Joi Kumar (Del) 31:53.09 secs.
Long Jump: 1. Sanjai Raj (Ben) 7.84 metres, 2. Ashok Kumar (TN) 7.65 metres, 3. Rajesh Babu (Ker) 7.62 meters.
Shot Put: 1. Ranvijay (UP) 20.26m, 2. Navpreet Singh (Pun) 19.93m, 3. Shakti Singh (Har) 19.47m.
Pole Vault: 1. Praveen Kumar (Har) 4.65m, 2. Gajanen Upadhyay (UP) 4.60m, 3.Ranjit Kumar (TN) 4.50m.
Hammer Throw: 1. Birkaran Singh (Pun) 61.80m, 2. Nirbhay Singh (UP) 61.20m, 3. Kulwinder Singh (Pun) 59.58m.
Women:
100 metres: 1. Poonam Tomar (Del) 11.68 secs, 2. Rakhee Saha (Ben) 12.01`{gcs, 3. K N Priya (TN) 12.08 secs.
1500 metres: 1. Shanthi (TN 4:30.02 secs; 2. Sunita (Del) 4:30.40 secs 3. Preeja Shridharan (Ker) 4:33.32 secs.
High Jump: 1. Bobby Aloysious (Ker) 1.91m.
Shot Put: 1. N.Latha (TN) 15.93m, 2. Chaitali Paul (Ben).
Javelin: 1. M K Prajisha (Ker) 50.78m, 2. Manisha Mondal (Ben) 48.65m, 3. Suman Devi (UP) 48.41m.
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