Gandhinagar, Sep 30: Gujarat’s ace shooter Elavenil Valarivan gave the hosts their fourth gold even as several favourites, including Olympic silver medallist weightlifter Mirabai Chanu, path-breaking fencer Bhavani Devi and wrestler Divya Kakaran, lived up to their top billing and pocketed gold medals in their respective events in the 36th National Games here on Friday.
The athletics arena at IIT Gandhinagar, however, was on fire, with as many as nine Games’ records falling during the course of the action-packed day.
Munita Prajapati (Uttar Pradesh), daughter of construction labour, and 17-year-old Parvej Khan (Services) were the stars of the day, with Munita setting the first record of this edition in the Women’s 20km walk. She clocked a commendable 1 hour 38 minutes 20 seconds.
Parvej Khan, then, did one better, breaking the highly-rated Bahadur Prasad’s 28-year-old Games record in the men’s 1500m to the delight of the fraternity. He slashed nearly two seconds off his personal best time to win the metric mile gold in 3:40.89.
The 2018 Asian Games decathlon champion Swapna Barman, competing in Madhya Pradesh colours here, claimed the women’s high jump record with a clearance of 1.83m while Praveen Chithravel (Tamil Nadu) made light of a depleted triple jump field to win gold with a Games record effort of 16.68m.
Damneet Singh (Punjab) in the men’s hammer throw and Kiran Baliyan (Uttar Pradesh) in women’s shot put also entered the record books. In the men’s 100m semifinals, Amlan Borgohain (Assam) also broke the National Games record, set at 10.45 seconds by Haryana’s Dharambir Singh in Thiruvananthapuram in 2015.
Amlan Borgohain stopped the clock at 10.28 seconds, two-hundredths of a second outside the National Record held by Amiya Kumar Mallick since 2016.
Gujarat’s women’s tennis team defeated Karnataka 2-0 in the semifinals at the Sabarmati Riverfront sports complex.
Among the favourites, Bhavani Devi (Tamil Nadu) completed a hat-trick of women’s sabre individual gold medals in the National Games. Having barely slept after flying in from her training base in France and having carried the Tamil Nadu flag in the athletes’ parade on Thursday, she spent a productive day at the Mahatma Mandir, asserting her primacy as India’s best Sabre fencer. (IANS)
