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Chennai: Promising youngster Dutee Chand set a national junior record en route to winning gold in women's 100m dash on the opening day of the 12th Federation Cup National Junior Athletics Championships here on Friday.
Dutee clocked a remarkable 11.63 secs that erased the earlier national junior record of 11.75s held by Saraswati Dey since 1996 by a huge margin. With today's effort, she also qualified for this year's World Junior Athletics Championships to be held at Eugene in United States.
A bronze medallist in 200m in the Senior Asian Championships in Pune last year, fast rising Odisha sprinter is expected to do well in the upcoming Asian Junior Championships at Chinese Taipei next month.
Tamil Nadu's Archana Suseendran, the double gold medallist in last year's South Asian Junior Championships in Ranchi, finished a distant second in 12.14s while Bengal girl Himashree Roy took the bronze, clocking 12.20s.
Shot putter Navtejdeep Singh of Punjab also made World Junior Athletics Championships grade as he tossed the 6kg iron ball to 18.56m to win the gold.
The second-placed Shakti Solanki, another SAF junior gold medallist and World Youth Championships participant just like Navtejdeep, managed only 17.93m to gain a berth for the Asian Junior Championships. The qualification norm for World Juniors stood at 18.25m.
Haryana metric miler Pinki outclassed the fancied Kerala runner P U Chitra to win the women's 1500m race in 4 minutes 27.26 secs. A tired Chitra made a gallant effort to catch-up with Pinki but could only manage a second place in 4:30.19 whereas Delhi's Preeti Lamba took the bronze in 4:35.70.
International Mohammed Afsal brought Kerala a thrilling win in the men's 1500m race. Afsal won the closely fought race in 3:52.44 while Assam's Ajay Kumar Saroj (3:52.60) and Bengal boy Shashi Bhushan (3:52.65) filled the next two spots.
Punjab got the second gold of the day through long jumper Bhumika Thakur (5.94m). National junior champion Bhairabi Roy (West Bengal) won the silver with an effort of 5.75m.
