Beant Singh, Gayathry impress in Junior Natl Athletics Meet

Haryana's middle-distance runner Beant Singh and Kerala high jumper Gayathry Sivakumar dominated the proceedings, with national records in their respective events, on the opening day, at the 30th Junior National Athletics Championships.
Beant, eclipsed the national mark in the 1,000m event in the boys' U-16 category with a timing of 2:27.87 secs and also earned a meet record bonus of Rs 25,000.
Uttarakhand's Pawan Kumar (2:32.80 s) and another Haryana lad Sunil (2:33.86 s) won silver and bronze respectively.
Talented Gayathry Sivakumar successfully defended her title in U-14 high jump event with an effort of 1.61 m that improved upon her previous national recprd (1.59m) and meet record (1.55m).

Jharkhand's Pratibha Kumari jumped 1.47 m to win the silver medal while Kevinaa Ashwine got the bronze with a leap of 1.44m.
In the youth boys' (u-18) 1500m, Delhi runner Rahul improved the nine-year-old meet mark with a timing of 3:55.28s.
The earlier record holder was Ajay Kumar Saroj of Assam with timing of 3:59.93s. The Assam boy was a bronze medalist in last year's Asian Youth Games and finished fifth in the recent Youth Olympic Games at Nanjing, China.