Mangaluru: Gujarat’s Maniram Patel claimed gold in the men’s 20 km walk in the 19th Federation Cup senior athletics championship, clocking a time of 1:29:51 in the finals held here this morning.
Kuldeep of Tata Motors (1:31:04) and Ankit Kumar Kumar of Indian Navy came second and third respectively.
At the end of the second day yesterday, hosts Karnataka was leading the points table with 63 points, ahead of Army (46) and Kerala (40).
World University Games silver medallist and defending champion Inderjeet Singh of Haryana became the first athlete in the meet to qualify for the Rio Olympics with a stupendous toss of 20.65m in shot put.
However, he just fell short of the national record which is held by Om Prakash Singh (20.69 m), who finished third at the meet. Inderjeet told reporters that he would train every single day to prepare for the Rio Olympics and would guarantee a medal for the country.
Devender Singh of the Army created the first meet record in the Federation cup in the javelin throw event, setting out the spear to 79.65 m. Singh and the silver medallist Neeraj Chopra of Haryana (73.96m) came under the qualifying grade for the Asian meet at Wuhan, China next month.
Armymen Durgesh Kumar Pal and M Ramachandran made it to the Wuhan-bound team by claiming gold and silver in the men’s 400 m hurdles, clocking 50.29s and 50.35s respectively.
Anu Raghavan (Kerala), who took the women’s title in 400m hurdles, also attained the qualifying norm for the Asian meet with a time of 59.13s.
Tintu Luka of Kerala claimed the gold in the women’s 800m race with a time of 2:04.14, ensuring a place in the national squad for Wuhan but failed to qualify for the Rio Olympics.
Srabani Nanda of Odisha, winner of 100m race with her personal best time of 11.59s also qualified for the Asian championship.
Finals in seven events would be held in the evening session today.
PTI
