Last round brings Arun triple jump gold with Games record

Athletes A.B. Arun and Pradeep Senthil Kumar won gold in triple jump and 800m respectively at the 37th National Games. Srabani Nanda and Archana Kamath won gold in women's 200m and table tennis singles respectively. Swimmers Srihari Nataraj, Virdhawal Khade and Nina Venkatesh set new Games records in their events. Karthik Unnikrishnan and T. Selva Prabhu won silver and bronze in triple jump.

The triple jump field had a 17m man in Karthik Unnikrishnan and T. Selva Prabhu, last year’s World junior silver medallist with a personal best of 16.78m. But A.B. Arun somehow felt very good as he warmed up for the 37th National Games final at the Bambolin Athletics Stadium here on Thursday. And in the end Arun, the 24-year-old National Open champion, walked away with the gold bettering the Games record and his personal best.

“I was worried after an early foul but I’m happy I could get my best in the last jump,” said Arun, the Navy athlete who hails from Thiruvananthapuram, who improved his personal best from last month’s 16.46m to 16.79 here. Karthik, who has a personal best of 17.10m, took the silver (16.57) while Selva was a centimetre behind for the bronze.

Meanwhile, Srabani Nanda shocked Asian silver medallist Jyothi Yarraji to take the women’s 200m gold while Tamil Nadu’s Pradeep Senthil Kumar equalled his personal best while winning the men’s 800m gold, his first major title at the National level.

Pradeep, who hails from Chennai, broke away from the bunch in the second lap in the two-lapper to win the title comfortably.

“I did not feel very good initially, somehow there was a sort of burning sensation in the air, I was sweating a lot,” Pradeep, who took to sport as a long jumper and then moved to sprints before coming to the middle distance running, told The Hindu.

In swimming, five of the day’s six events produced Games records with Srihari Nataraj (100m back), Virdhawal Khade (50m fly) and Nina Venkatesh (women’s 50m fly) bettering their own records.

In table tennis, West Bengal’s third-seeded Anirban Ghosh and Karnataka’s Archana Kamath won the men’s and women’s singles titles in one-sided finals on Thursday.