Pooja and Jyothi Yarraji headlined India’s impressive performance, winning six gold medals on the opening day of the Taiwan Open athletics meet
Hyderabad: Pooja and Jyothi Yarraji headlined India’s impressive performance, winning six gold medals on the opening day of the Taiwan Open athletics meet on Saturday.
India’s first gold came through 22-year-old Pooja in the women’s 1500m, clocking 4:11.65.It may be mentioned here that the gifted athlete won a silver medal last month in the same event at the Asian
Athletics Championships in Gumi, South Korea, with a time of 4:10.83. She had also won bronze in the 800m race in the competition.
Then it was the turn of Abdulla Aboobacker to clinch the honours in men’s triple jump, with a leap of 16.21m from his third attempt.
Jyothi Yarraji of Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), who retained her gold in the Asian Athletics Championship 100m hurdles recently, won the event with a timing of 12.99s. It was a fantastic finish as she went into the final hurdle trailing in second.
Tejas Shirse won the gold in the men’s 110m hurdles race with a season’s best timing of 13.52s but missed the chance to beat his own national record (13.41s), having fumbled with a few hurdle clearances.
The women’s 4x100m relay team of Sudheeksha V, Abhinaya Rajarajan, Sneha SS, and Nithya Gandhe finished comfortably ahead of second-placed Vietnam in 44.07 seconds (championship record).
The men’s team – Gurindervir Singh, Animeesh Kujur, Manikanta Hoblidhar, and Amlan Borgohain – registered a 38.75-second finish.
