BHUBANESWAR: Bengal girl Abha Khatua, representing Maharashtra this time, emerged as India's strongest woman athlete as she shattered the national record in women's shot put on the second day of the National Senior Federation athletics championship here on Monday.
Khatua, who was the top Indian in the event going into the meet, set the new mark at 18.41m at the Kalinga Stadium making her the sole owner of the record, which was earlier jointly held by her and Haryana's Manpreet Kaur. She improved on 18.06m, which was the existing record. "At the IGP in Bengaluru, I didn't get the correct shot put. But today it was fine. I also had the right technique," she said.
Khatua's effort was, however, well short of the Olympics qualifying mark of 18.80m. Khatua is a native of Khurshi village near Narayangarh town in West Midnapur district.
Bengal's Moumita Mondal won two bronze medals in 100m hurdles and long jump. Nithya Ramraj of Tamil Nadu won the 100m hurdles, while Kerala's Nayana James was best in long jump.
Not far away from the shot put arena, the battle between two of India's top long jumpers lasted till the penultimate round as Nayana James pipped her young rival Shaili Singh for the second time this season. "The two fouls she had were big jumps. I wish those were legal then she would have had a really big one today," James' co ach Pinto Mathew told TOI.
James stepped up the battle with a jump of 6.33m on her fourth try but Shaili, who had lost her rhythm and run-up in the previous two rounds, came back strongly as she wrested the lead back going one centimetre better.
But James, who had leaped to 6.67m at the start of the season, had plenty in reserve a s she produced the biggest leap of the day, touching down at 6.53m.
It was Shaili's turn to go first in the final round but she failed to get past the mark set by her 29-year-old rival.
Unnathi qualifies for World Juniors:
The highlight of the day's action on the track was the upset win by young Unnathi Aiyappa over veteran Srabani Nanda in the women's 200m final.
The 19-year-old Bengaluru girl, daughter of Asiad medallist Pramila and coach BP Aiyappa, clocked a PB of 23.85 seconds. Nanda, who was looking to triumph in her home ground, took the silver in 23.89s followed by Devyanbiba M of Gurajat who clocked 24.14s.
"We came here to qualify for the World Juniors and she did that," a proud Aiyappa told TOI. The qualification mark for the World Juniors to be held in Lima, Peru is 24.35 seconds.
