Tamil Nadu's Raajakumar sets new meet record

New Delhi, June 3 (UNI) Tamil Nadu's S Raajakumar created the lone meet record when he won the boys under-18 Octathlon event at the second National Combined Event Competition here.

Raajakumar scored 4752 points to create new meet record in the Octathlon event, which comprises eight events in two spans.

Raajakumar scored 618 points in 100m, 711 in Long Jump (6.56m), 552 in Shot Put (11.10m), 567 in 400m (55.81s), 784 in 110m hurdles (15.55s), 602 in High Jump (1.77m), 286 in Javelin Throw (29.06m) and 632 in 1000m (3:03.31s).

C Gnanapandian of Tamil Nadu stood second with 4566 points, while G Rajesh of Andhra Pradesh finished third with 4496 points.

Interestingly all top four finishers in the boys Octathlon event bettered the previous meet record of 4464 points set by Deepan Kumar in Chennai last year.

In Men's Decathlon, P J Vinod of Kerala finished first with 6312 points which, however, was way below his personal best of 7383 points.

''I would be in shape in coming months as I recently joined the camp after two months' interval and that's why I didn't want to take risk and injure myself while exerting,'' he said after winning the Best Athlete of the Event Competition title, yesterday.

In the girls under-16 Pentathlon, G M Aishwarya of Karnataka took the honor with 2923 points while B Azaruddin of Tamil Nadu won the boys under-16 Pentathlon title with 3265 points.

N Leelavathy of Tamil Nadu and Natasha Sagar, lone athletes in the women and girls under-18 year Heptathlon events, scored 4599 and 4287 points respectively.

UNI HSB AY KN1210