The third day of the Maharashtra Junior State Athletics Selection Trials turned out to be a fruitful one for the Nagpur district athletes as they dominated the proceedings at the Sant Dnyaneshwar Sports Complex, Pimpri Chinchwad in Pune on Thursday.
Nagpur district athletes bagged four medals including two yellow metals to stamp their authority in style.
Bhavyashree Mahalle clinched the gold medal in the 2000m race with a timing of 6 minutes and 44.40 seconds. Competing in the Under-16 girls category, Bhavyashree took the lead from the word go and did not give any chance whatsoever to her competitors.
Bhavyashree, a student of Zilla Parishad School, Ramana Maruti, beat Gayatri Patil of Kolhapur, who had to be satisfied with the runner-up spot with a timing of 6 minutes and 45.90 seconds. Ahmednagar district’s Sakshi Bhandari finished third. She clocked 6 minutes and 46.80 secs.
Sandeep Gound added one more gold medal when the young sprinter won the 80m hurdles. In the U-16 boys section, Sandeep clocked 10.92 seconds to claim the yellow metal. A member of the Umred’s Om Sai Sporting Club, Sandeep beat Nashik’s Dhairyasheel Patil (10.98s) and Aurangabad’s Balraj Pardeshi (11.32s).
In the 60m sprint of U-14 boys, Sanvi Pathak grabbed the bronze medal. A student of Modern School, Sanvi took 8.20 seconds to finish third. Pune’s Rutuja Bhosale (7.78 secs) and Divyanshi Lande of Ahmednagar (7.99 secs) secured the first two positions.
In the same age group, Nav Maharashtra Krida Mandal’s Akansha Sodiya placed third in the 600m race with a timing of 1 minute and 42 seconds.
Bhavyashree and Akansha train under Jitendra Ghordadekar, while Sandeep is a trainee of Praful Bele.
Nagpur District Athletics Association (NDAA) secretary Sharad Suryavanshi has expressed satisfaction over the performance of city athletes. NDAA officials Gurudeo Nagrale, Nagesh Sahare, Dr Sanjay Choudhary, Shekhar Suryavanshi, Dr Vivekanand Singh, Dr Aditya Soni, Ramchandra Wani, Bunty Prasad Yadav, Umesh Naidu, SJ Anthony, Archana Kottewar have congratulated the successful athletes.
