Federation Cup | Ayyasamy Dharun breaks national record in 400m hurdles; books CWG berth

03/09/2018

Tamil Nadu athlete Ayyasamy Dharun shattered the men’s 400m hurdles national record on the last day of the 22nd Federation Cup National Senior Championships in Patiala and booked his berth for the upcoming Commonwealth Games. Along with Dharun, triple jumper Arpinder Singh also got a CWG place.

The 21-year-old Tamil Nadu athlete broke the Joseph G Abraham’s record which lasted for more than a decade as the latter had claimed the national record of 49.51s in August 2007 in Osaka. However, Dharun managed a record-breaking timing of 49.45s on the final day. Santhosh Kumar (50.14s) and Ramachandran M (51.61s) won the silver and bronze respectively.

Before participating in the event, Dharun had just recovered from a bout of typhoid and successfully touched the qualifying standard for the Gold Coast CWG which was set by the Athletics Federation of India.

His last best performance was 50.51s which he produced at an Indian Grand Prix event in Bengaluru in July 2016.

"I reached here on 24 February and soon after arriving here, I suffered from typhoid. I recovered and then started light training only on 2 March. So, I could not do any proper training before this championships. I ran in the individual 400m race on 6 March and finished sixth," Dharun said after the race as quoted by PTI.

"Apart from that, I did not run any full 400m race. Leave alone making a national record and qualifying for the Commonwealth Games, I had not thought of winning the race. I was just participating in the race. I was not hoping to qualify for the CWG, I was thinking of trying for the Asian Games, but it just happened."

Triple jumper Arpinder Singh also booked CWG berth for the second straight time by winning a gold medal as he made an effort of 16.61m which was a centimeter more than AFI’s qualifying standard of 16.60m. He started with a 16.23m jump and in the fourth attempt, he produced 16.48 and in the fifth attempt, he cleared the 16.61m mark.

Arpinder’s personal best performance was 17.17m which he had showed four years ago. The Indian player won a bronze medal in 2014 Glasgow CWG with the help of 16.63m jump.

However, veteran Renjith Maheswary had to be stretchered out with a suspected left knee dislocation and figure fracture after he was slipped during his run-up.

Jinson Johnson won the men’s 1,500m race in 3 minutes and 39.69 seconds, just a few seconds outside the qualifying time which is 3:39.50. The women’s 1,500m race was won by PU Chitra as she won the gold by finishing it in 4:15.25.

Senior athlete Sudha Singh finished the women’s 3000m steeplechase event in 9 minute 50.78 and the qualifying mark was 9:34.01.