Ranchi: Jyothi Yarraji won the women's 100m hurdles gold with ease and bettered her own meet record on the penultimate day of the Federation Cup Senior Athletics Championships here on Wednesday. Yarraji, representing Andhra Pradesh, had set a meet record (13.18 secs) in the heats of women's 100m hurdles on Tuesday. She further improved the meet record to 12.89 seconds on her way to winning gold on Wednesday.
She also bettered the qualification standard of 13.63 seconds set by the Athletics Federation of India, for the Asian Championships to be held in Bangkok from July 12-16. Tamil Nadu's R Nithya Ramraj was a distant second with a time of 13.44 seconds, while Sapna Kumari of Jharkhand was third with 13.58 seconds.
As expected, the men's 110m hurdles gold went to Maharashtra's Tejas Ashok Shirse. He was far ahead of his competitors, clocking 13.72 seconds. Punjab's Twinkle will be one to watch in the final of women's 800m scheduled for Thursday. In her heat on Wednesday, she clocked 2:05.39 to breach the Asian qualifying mark of 2:05.74 seconds. On the men's side, only two athletes posted a time below 1 minute 50 seconds in the 800m heats. While Ankesh Chaudhary of Himachal Pradesh clocked 1:49.73 seconds in his heat, Anu Kumar of Uttarakhand clocked 1:49.93 seconds.
Towards the end of the day's competitions, rain and thunderstorm hit the Birsa Munda Stadium and floodlights went away briefly, leaving the whole arena dark. The participating athletes had to run for safer places. The blackout happened just after the men's 200m heat races. But the competitions resumed after a brief halt of around 15 minutes, according to an official. The 200m women's heptathlon event was completed, as also the men's 400m hurdles, the last event of the day.
