Haryana's Pooja, Telangana’s Sriteja set records in National Junior Athletics

Bhubaneswar: Haryana’s promising teenager, Pooja, continued to hog the limelight as she improved on the national record in the U18 women's heptathlon in the ongoing 39th National Junior Athletics Championships at Kalinga Stadium here on Wednesday.

The day after she improved her own national U18 women’s high jump record to 1.85 on the opening day of the heptathlon event, Pooja clinched the gold medal in the multi-discipline event with a national record. Pooja’s point tally of 5102 points was better than the previous national record of 4357 points set by R. Khatun in 2024. With the gold medal in the heptathlon, Pooja’s gold tally has swelled to two. She is also the winner of U18 women’s high jump gold.

Telangana’s Sriteja Tholem also improved the previous national record (5087 points) but had to settle for second place. Haryana’s Khushi won bronze with a tally of 4350 points.

While Haryana led the show overall, Reliance Foundation athletes also sparkled, winning a total of 12 medals, including eight gold, besides setting two meet records.

On the final day of the event on Wednesday, Reliance Foundation stole the show by winning four gold medals in the evening session through Omkar Prasad Nanda (U18 men’s shot put), DM Jayaram (men’s 200m), Sakshi Chavan (women’s 200m) and Laxmipriya Kisan (women’s 800m).

Triple gold medallist DM Jayaram was really happy to win three gold medals in his last year of U20 competitions. "I achieved my personal best in the 100m and also was part of the meet record-setting 4x100m relay team. It is not easy to win three gold medals for a sprinter and I’m very happy that I achieved this feat. I hope to do even better in the future. Doing it in front of my home state crowd makes it even more special. The Odisha government and Reliance Foundation have been a big support. I have had access to the best coaches and support staff thanks to them. I will now focus on the National Games and World University Games, which are coming up next year and aim to achieve my goals there,” he said.

Sakshi, Jayaram and Astik Pradhan dominated the sprinting events, with Sakshi and Jayaram taking away gold in both the 100m and 200m events. Jayaram and Astik were also a part of the Odisha men’s 4x100m relay team that blazed away to gold in just 41.10s, a new meet record. Mahendra Santa and Rajendra Sidhu were the other members of the dominant relay quartet.

Jayaram clocked a new personal best of 10.50s in the men’s 100m final, while Sakshi also equalled her personal best of 11.86s in the women’s equivalent. Sandeep Gond added to the gold rush by finishing top in the men’s 110m hurdles event with a time of 14.02s.

Overall, they won a total of 12 medals, including eight gold, two silver and two bronze medals.