National Games: Sachin Yadav win javelin with meet record

National Games: Sachin Yadav win javelin with meet record

National Games: Sachin Yadav win javelin with meet record ByHT Correspondent Feb 13, 2025 05:18 AM IST Share Via Copy Link Sachin’s effort though fell short of the automatic 2025 World Championships qualification mark of 85.50m

New Delhi: Upcoming javelin thrower Sachin Yadav extended his hot streak with a personal best effort to win the men’s javelin at the National Games in Dehradun on Wednesday.

Sachin Yadav’s fifth attempt of 84.39m broke the meet record (HT)

Sachin’s fifth attempt of 84.39m broke the meet record held by Haryana’s Rajendra Singh (82.23m) and marked the fifth successive competition in which the Uttar Pradesh thrower had logged an 80m-plus throw. Sachin’s statemate Rohit Yadav (80.47m) and Uttarakhand’s Vikas Sharma (79.33m) came second and third, respectively.

The 25-year-old first crossed 80m at last year’s National Open Athletics Championships in Bengaluru, where he won with a throw of 80.04m. He then finished third at the Federation Cup (80.27m), won the Indian Grand Prix 3 in Bengaluru (82.69m) and won the All India Police Athletics Championships (84.21m).

Sachin’s effort, however, fell short of the automatic qualification mark of 85.50m for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo later this year. “My goal was to achieve the World Athletics automatic qualification mark, but I missed. I’m close to my goal and should be able to achieve it in the next competition.”

Services runner Sawan Barwal representing Himachal Pradesh and Haryana high jumper Pooja were the other two who better the meet record in the Games athletics.

Barwal completed a distance double, running a well-judged 5000m to win at 13:45.93, which bettered the National Games record of 13:50.05 set by G Lakshmanan (Services) in 2015. Barwal won the 10,000m on the opening day of track and field competitions.

Pooja cleared the bar at 1.84m to better the meet record of 1.83m, set by Swapna Barman in 2022.

Gujarat’s Ruchit Mori won the men’s 400m hurdles with a timing of 50.97s, followed by Punjab’s Hardeep (51.02s) and Maharashtra’s Rohan Kamble (51.77s). Among women, Tamil Nadu’s Vithya Ramraj claimed the top spot with a timing of 58.11secs while her statemate Srivardhini SK (59.86s) came second. Maharashtra’s Neha Dhabale (1:00.52) came third.

In women’s shot put, Punjab’s Jasmin Kaur emerged victorious with an impressive throw of 15.97m. Uttar Pradesh’s Vidhi (15.46m) came second, pipping Delhi’s Srishti Vig (15.46m) with a better second best throw after both had identical best efforts.

In hockey, Madhya Pradesh will face Haryana in the women’s final while Karnataka set up the summit showdown against UP in the men’s final. Both MP and Karnataka won their semis in shoot-outs.

In table tennis, top-seed G Sathiyan of Tamil Nadu and second-seed Payas Jain of Delhi moved into the men’s singles semi-finals with identical 3-1 wins while the women’s singles event saw a major upset as unseed Shriya Anand of Tamil Nadu shocked top-seed Sutirtha Mukherjee 3-1 to book her place in the last four.