Dagar dominates athletics arena

Ranchi, Feb 18 (PTI) Asian junior champion HarvinderSingh Dagar posted a meet record to dominate the athleticsarena even as Karnataka''s Sahna Kumari narrowly missed a newmark in the 34th National Games here today.

Asian Games gold medalist Sudha Singh did not start, eventhough her name figured in the list of the women''s 3000msteeplechase that saw Priyanka Singh Patel of UP setting a newmeet record.

The promising UP lad, Dagar posted a new Games markhurling the ball and chain to 66.79m en route to the title,while statemate Chandrodaya Narayan Singh, a favourite in theevent, settled for the silver with a throw of 65.22m.

The bronze went to Delhi''s Nirbhay Singh in 61.99m.

Ankit Sharma gave Madhya Pradesh a proud moment when hesnatched the men''s long jump title with his last-round jump of7.61m. The event saw an upset as national champion Maha Singhwas pushed to the fifth place (7.53m).

Punjab''s Shamsher Pratap Singh (7.

59) and Tamil Nadujumper K Prem Kumar (7.58) were the silver and bronzemedalists respsectively.

In the women''s 3000m steeplechase, UP''s Priyanka SinghPatel and Haryana''s Kiran Tiwari had a keen tussle, with theformer winning the title in the last 20m and setting a newGames record time of 10:40.81.

Kiran was second at 10:41.19 -- he also bettered theprevious mark of 10:56.35 set by Sudha in the last edition inGuwahati.

Tamil Nadu''s Jayakumar Surender and M M Anchu of Keralanotched their personal best timings to clinch the 110m men''sand 100m women''s hurdles.

Earlier, national record holder Deepmala Devi,representing Jharkhand, won the gold in 1:43.04 secs.

Gaurav Kumari of Maharashtra was just 27 seconds behindfor the silver while Manipur''s L Sarda got the bronze in1:49:10.

In the women''s high jump, national champion Sahana Kumarimissed a chance to improve the meet mark by just 1 cm.

She was a clear winner at 1.81m.

Bobby Aloysius of Kerala has the Games record with 1.82.

Kerala jumper KC Chandana and Bengal''s Mallika Mondal hadan identical 1.76m clearance.

However, the former was awarded the silver medal as shehad less number of failures in all her attempts.