The All-India Inter-University athletics meet was held in Bhubaneswar, Odisha at the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) in the last week of 2024 (December 26th to 30th).
Coming right at the back of the Junior national championships (held in the same city at a different venue), it was another opportunity for our young stars to show their mettle.
Here are some notable results and takeaways from the event.
Bapi Hansda, the 400m runner from Odisha, who missed a major part of the season due to injury (including the junior athletics championships) had an underwhelming comeback, finishing 5th in the semis.
Abhishek was the surprise winner in men’s 400m with a PB timing of 46.21s.
Sakshi Chavan in the women’s 100m (11.78s) bettered her timing from the junior championships (11.86s) to win gold.
Home favourite, Lalu Prasad Bhoi was expected to win the men’s 100m and he duly obliged with a timing of 10.52s.
He has an impressive PB of 10.34s and is a young sprinting talent to watch out for along with Animesh Kujur. Animesh and Lalu were also part of the 100m relay team, winning gold with an excellent timing of 39.97s.
Anurag C. V. might be the next big thing from Kerala in men’s long jump. He won gold with a very impressive distance of 7.90m, breaking the meet record along the way.
Ruchit Mori (51.1s, PB) and Neha Dhabale (58.04s, MR) won the men’s and women’s 400m hurdles events with notable performances.
Jyoti and Deepika, the rising stars of women’s javelin had another tussle with Jyoti coming up trumps here with a 56.18m throw.
Deepika had earlier pipped Jyoti in the national junior championships. Shakshi Sharma was the surprise silver medallist with a throw of 53.41s.
Men’s javelin threw up a surprise winner and a new entrant to the 80m club in Sagar Kamboj with massive 80.82m throw.
Pooja and Khyati Mathur went toe to toe in women’s high jump and the much younger, Pooja came out on top with a meet record of 1.84m.
A special shoutout to nnis Sports (@nnis_sports on X) for providing great coverage of the event and Swaminathan Gunasekaran (https://www.youtube.com/@swaminathangunasekaran5067) for the YouTube videos.
