Nagpur: Runners Gopal Palandurkar and Adarsh Bhure of Nagpur gave their best and recorded historic performance in 100m event at the 72nd Maharashtra State Senior Athletics Championship under way at RTMNU’s synthetic track in Ravi Nagar in Nagpur on Sunday.
City boy Palandurkar clocked 10.78 secs to clinch silver medal in 100m race while his colleague and Nagpur team’s captain Adarsh Bhure bagged a bronze to make it 2-3 finish for the home side. Bhure, a specialist in 100m, clocked 10.85 secs to finish third. In this event the gold medal went to Pranav Gurav of Pune, who completed the race in record time of 10.63 secs.
This is for the first time in history of state senior athletics meet that Nagpur won medals in 100 metres race. The 100m race was just a start of medals for Nagpur athletes as later Nayan Sarde, Sakshi Tambakhe and Tejaswini Lambkane were successful in bagging silver medals to take the tally ahead on Day 2.
Sarde finished second and got silver in the men’s 110m hurdles. He completed the event in 14.79 secs. Kolhapur’s Vilas Khodke got the top position with a time of 14.76 secs and Daksh Sumerpur of Pune won the bronze medal with a timing of 15.45 secs.
In the women’s 400 metres race, city’s Sakshi Tambakhe won a silver medal. Tambakhe carved out a time of 56.68 secs to reach the finish line. Akanksha Gawde of Thane bagged gold and Shravani Sangle of Nashik took the bronze medal. Tejaswini Lambkane, who represented Nagpur in the 10,000 metres race, shocked everyone with her performance as she took a record time of 37 mins 45.68 secs to finish second and make a big turnaround in the group.
In this event gold medal went to Archana Jadhav of Mumbai Suburban and bronze medal was bagged by Buldhana’s Pranali Shegaonkar. On Day 2 medals were coming for the Nagpur team. One more history was recorded as it was for the first time that Nagpur team registered its name in the medals tally of hammer throw category in the State Senior Athletics Championship. Nagpur’s Ujjwal Kalsait was the one who brought a bronze medal with a throw of 43.15m. This medal ended the medal drought in hammer throw for city athletes. In this event gold medal was taken by Shantanu Uchle of Pune while silver medal went to Sameer Deshmukh.
The winners of the competition were awarded medals at the hands of Dr Sonali Shirbhate, PSI Sachin Bonde, Dr Manoj Ambadkar, Soma Kiran, Umesh Naidu, Shekhar Suryawanshi and Dr Nitin Jangitwar. Nagpur District Athletics Association President Gurudeo Nagrale, Secretary Dr Sharad Suryawanshi, VicePresident Ravindra Tong, Vice-President Nagesh Sahare, Senior Joint Secretary Ramchandra Wani, Joint Secretary Archana Kottewar, Treasurer Dr Sanjay Chaudhary, Head of Technical Committee Dr Vibekanand Singh congratulated the players on their success.
