India wins six gold in Taiwan Open athletics

Pooja and Jyothi Yarraji headlined India’s impressive performance, winning six gold medals on the opening day of the Taiwan Open athletics meet

Hyderabad: Pooja and Jyothi Yarraji headlined India’s impressive performance, winning six gold medals on the opening day of the Taiwan Open athletics meet on Saturday.

India’s first gold came through 22-year-old Pooja in the women’s 1500m, clocking 4:11.65.It may be mentioned here that the gifted athlete won a silver medal last month in the same event at the Asian

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Athletics Championships in Gumi, South Korea, with a time of 4:10.83. She had also won bronze in the 800m race in the competition.

Then it was the turn of Abdulla Aboobacker to clinch the honours in men’s triple jump, with a leap of 16.21m from his third attempt.

Jyothi Yarraji of Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), who retained her gold in the Asian Athletics Championship 100m hurdles recently, won the event with a timing of 12.99s. It was a fantastic finish as she went into the final hurdle trailing in second.

Tejas Shirse won the gold in the men’s 110m hurdles race with a season’s best timing of 13.52s but missed the chance to beat his own national record (13.41s), having fumbled with a few hurdle clearances.

The women’s 4x100m relay team of Sudheeksha V, Abhinaya Rajarajan, Sneha SS, and Nithya Gandhe finished comfortably ahead of second-placed Vietnam in 44.07 seconds (championship record).

The men’s team – Gurindervir Singh, Animeesh Kujur, Manikanta Hoblidhar, and Amlan Borgohain – registered a 38.75-second finish.