Bengaluru, Apr 10: Assam sprinter Amlan Borgohain of Assam, long jumper M Sreeshankar and 100m hurdler Jyothi Yarraji of Andhra Pradesh made their first appearance in a domestic competition this year memorable by winning gold in the AFI Indian Grand Prix 3 Athletics competition, here on Monday.
Borgohain, 24, claimed the 100m-200m double. Having taken a break after the Asian Indoor Championships in February, he returned to outdoor competition and sustained his acceleration to clock 10.50 seconds and win by two-hundredths of a second from Amiya Kumar Mallick of Odisha.
He returned to the track less than an hour later to win the 200m in 21.20 seconds.
Commonwealth Games silver medallist Sreeshankar, whose last competition was the National Games in October 2022, produced three efforts that were good for gold on the day.
The World No. 6 won with a leap of 7.94m on his last try at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium. He was satisfied with his efforts since he is coming back from a Grade 2 hamstring injury that kept him on the sidelines for three months.
Like Borgohain, Jyothi took a break from competing after the Asian Indoor Championships and marked her return in the same venue where she rewrote the national record at 12.82 seconds.
She cruised to a win, clocking an easy 13.44 seconds, suggesting that India’s only sub-13 second hurdler was focusing on getting the technique right at the start of a big season.
Aishwarya Mishra of Maharashtra became the third Indian woman 400m sprinter to clock a sub-54 seconds time twice this year. She won the event on Monday in 53.63 seconds, leaving Kiran Pahal of Haryana in her wake.
Muhammed Ajmal won the men’s quarter-mile in 46.63 seconds, his best effort of the year and the third time he has gone below 47 seconds in 2023.
Hima Das, who had to endure a disqualification for a false start in the Indian Grand Prix 2 in Thiruvananthapuram, bounced back to win the women’s 200m while GK Vijayakumari of Karnataka returned to a national-level 800m after five years and beat Madhya Pradesh’s KM Deeksha with a surge over the last 100m. (PTI)
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