56th Open National Athletics: Javelin thrower Ravinder Singh sets first meet record

Lucknow: Javelin thrower Ravinder Singh broke the first meet record in the 56th Open National Athletics Championships with an effort of 79.04m on the second day of competitions here on Wednesday.

World junior record-holder Neeraj Chopra held the previous meet record of 77.67m from last year.

The silver medal went to Shivpal Singh (77.72m) who also bettered the old mark.

Olympian Manpreet Kaur registered her fourth straight title in women's shot put (seventh overall) by tossing the iron ball to 16.22m.

Hurdlers Purnima Hembram and Akhil Johnson bagged their first ever Open National titles in their respective events.

Race walker B Sowmya clocked third fastest winning time for 20 km walk (1:44:32) in the Open Nationals and became the second Police athlete after Sapna (2014) to win the event.

Kerala long jumper Muhammed Anees got his first national title today with a modest leap of 7.65m. Earlier, he had won the Indian Grand Prix title at Bangalore with a distance of 7.80m.

Metric miler Ajay Kumar Saroj completed a 'hat-trick' of victories in men's 1500m.

Ashwini Akkunji won her second-ever open national victory by winning the women's 400m. She got her first title six years ago at Kochi while taking the 400m hurdles gold.

Veteran sprinter H M Jyothi Srinivas (33) tasted success in women's 100m after a gap of eight years. Jyothi clocked 11.57 secs to secure a gold for her home state Karnataka. She represented her husband's state Andhra Pradesh while winning the previous title at Kochi in 2008.