Bhubaneswar: Punga Soren of Odisha secured a gold medal in 110m hurdles on the second day of the U-18 National Youth Athletics Championships at Vadodara in Gujarat, Sunday. Other state athlete Manisha Merel settled for bronze in girls’ long jump.
Punga clocked 14.28 seconds to take the yellow metal while the silver went to Aditya Prakash (14.32 seconds) of Jharkhand. RK Suryajith of Kerala settled for bronze with a time of 14.49 seconds.
In the girls’ long jump, Manisha covered a distance of 5.38 metres to be satisfied with the third position. The gold medal went to Sandra Babu (5.62 metres) of Kerala while Ambrikha Narzary of Assam settled for silver with a distance of 5.56 metres.
However, it was a disappointing day for Tejswini Kispotta of Odisha in girls’ 5000m race walk. Kispotta finished 10th with a timing of 32:16.61 seconds. Munita Prajapati of Madhya Pradesh (25:04.24s), Baljeet Kaur of Punjab (25:09.24s) and Jyoti of Haryana (26:27.17s) secured the top three positions respectively.
Meanwhile, another athlete from state Sukhi Baskey qualified for 200m finals after topping in the heats, which will take place Monday.