State junior athletics meet | Servan throws down two meet marks
The Hindu
Six new records set on final day; Palakkad is overall champion
On the final day of the State junior athletics meet, when six more new records were set, Kasaragod’s K.C. Servan stood out. He accounted two of those records, in the Under-16 boys’ shot put and discus throw at the University Stadium here on Thursday.
He erased his own record in discus with a throw of 59.25m, which also bettered the National record of 53.96 (set by Sahil Silwal in 2016).
Palakkad emerged as the overall champion with 491 points. Ernakulam (421.5) finished second and Kozhikode (375.5) third.
He has worn India’s blues, albeit in an Under-19 World Cup, with K.L. Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Harshal Patel and Jaydev Unadkat as his teammates. He has proudly adorned the Lion’s Crest — the famed Mumbai cricket logo — in all three formats. He has played with Yuvraj Singh, against Virat Kohli and Rahul Dravid and has the likes of Rahul and Joe Root in his illustrious list of dismissals. He is also a software developer for an IT giant, based in California. Virtually every middle-class Indian over the last three decades at some stage dreams of being either a cricketer or an IT professional. Saurabh Netravalkar has been combining two dreams, even after relocating to USA to pursue academics at the prestigious Cornell University in 2015.
Unlike most of the Olympic-bound athletes, who opt to train abroad before the big event, boxer Amit Panghal prefers training in home conditions prior to Paris 2024. A former World championships silver medallist and a World No. 1, Panghal won the 51kg quota place in the only chance he got. He wants to follow his own plans to script success in Paris.
The other men’s semifinal Friday is Norway’s Casper Ruud, twice the runner-up in Paris — to Rafael Nadal in 2022 and to Novak Djokovic in 2023 — against Germany’s Alexander Zverev, a finalist at the 2020 U.S. Open, an Olympic gold medalist and into the final four at Roland Garros for the fourth consecutive year.