Jaykumar Gavade of Pune District and Diandra Valladares of Thane District emerged as the fastest man and woman winning the 100 metres sprints in the LIC-69th Maharashtra State Senior Athletics Championships 2019, which commenced at the University Sports Grounds, Marines Lines, on Tuesday.
Diandra Valladares of Thane District emerged as the fastest woman winning the 100 metres sprint in the LIC-69th Maharashtra State Senior Athletics Championships 2019.
The men’s dash witnessed a close race between Gavade and Kiran Bhosale of Dhule District as they both put up a strong effort to get in front of the rest of the field. But, the latter seemed to have sufficient energy left in the tank as he managed to beat back the strong challenge from his Dhule rival to finish in first place and clinch the gold medal with a time of 10.62 seconds. Bhosale took the silver in 10.69secs and Thane District’s Kshitij Bhoite claimed the bronze in 10.81secs.
The University Sports track seems to be a happy ground for Diandra as this her third straight success after winning the YMCA Inter-State Championship in January and the Thane District Athletic selection meet earlier this month.
Women’s 100m champions Diandra Valladares (centre) of Thane is flanked by silver medal winner Siddhi Hiray (2nd left) of Pune and Saroj Shetty of Mumbai City who won the bronze. They pose with Adilee Sumariwalla (right), President AFI & MAA and Satish Uchil, Secretary MAA.
The Thane sprinter quickly took off the blocks and led from start to finish to claim the gold medal in a time of 11.62 seconds. Pune District’s Siddhi Hiray had to settle for silver in 12.08 secs and the bronze went to Saroj Shetty of Mumbai City who finished in 12.15 secs.
Pune hurdlers Paras Patil and Ankita Gosavi picked up the gold medals in the men’s 110 metres and women’s 100 metres hurdles respectively.
Earlier in the day, Nashik District’s youngsters Kisan Tadvi comfortably won the men’s 5000 metres as he finished well ahead of his compatriot Narendra Pratap Singh in 14:33.97 seconds. Arati Patil made it a one-two for Nashik as she won the women’s 5000 metres clocking a time of 18:00.69seconds.