World University Games silver medalist shot putter Inderjeet Singh achieved the Olympic qualification mark with a throw of 20.65m on the second day of the 19th Federation Cup at Mangala Stadium, here on Saturday.
Defending champion Inderjeet from Haryana was just a shade away from the national mark of 20.69m, held by Om Prakash Singh since 2012. The Olympic qualification period commenced only on Friday and is 20.50m for the men’s shot put. Punjab’s Tejinder Singh (18.08m) pushed Om Prakash (18.02m) to third spot.
Army man Devender Singh become the first athlete to create a new meet mark as he set out the spear to 79.65 metres to win the javelin throw event. Haryana’s Neeraj Chopra (73.96m) and Delhi lad Rohit Kumar (72.72m) were the other medallists. The first two came under the qualifying grade for the Asian meet.
National record-holder Rajinder Singh (Haryana), who won the National Games gold with 82.23m, finished a disappointing fourth with a paltry 71.67m. Former Youth Olympic Games silver medalist Durgesh Kumar Pal clinched the gold in men’s 400m hurdles clocking a personal best 50.29 secs, thus obtained a berth in the Wuhan-bound team for the Asian championships. It was indeed a tremendous improvement in Personal Bests for both the athletes as their previous bests stood at 50.61 and 50.87 secs respectively.
Capitalising on the absence of Ashwini Akkunji, Kerala girl Anu Raghavan took the women’s title in 400m hurdles. In addition to the gold, she also attained the qualifying norm for the Asians with a time of 59.13 secs that was third best in her career and second in the current seaon. In the men’s race Mallick, who underwent a training stint under Olympian Usain Bolt’s coach Glenn Mills, pipped defending champion Jyoti Shankar Debnath ,while both the athletes clocked an identical 10.56s but the former was declared as a winner in photo-finish.