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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
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Indians disappoint

BRESSANONE (Italy): Indian athletes put up a miserable performance on the third day of the 6th IAAF World youth championships here on Friday.

The ‘best athletes’ at the National Youth meet in Madurai in May, shot putter Gurwant Singh Sandhu and sprinter Mounika Gaddam, were among those who disappointed.

Gurwant’s poor effort

The phenomenon of the Indian athletes performing record-breaking feats at home and then failing to come anywhere those standards at major international meets abroad was once again evident as Gurwant Singh putted just 17.09 metres, as against his Madurai feat of 18.20m, to finish 15th out of 17 athletes in his qualifying group.

The Punjab boy ended up 27th overall out of 34 contestants.The automatic qualification mark was 19.20m with five athletes achieving that.

American Ryan Crouser led the field with 20.56m while Pole Krzysztof Brzozowski (20.11m) was another athlete who crossed 20 metres.

Mounika clocked 25.45s in heat 6 to end up fifth and go out in the first round of the 200 metres. She had clocked a National Youth record of 24.88 at Madurai. In the boys’ 200m heats, Amiya Kumar Mallick timed 22.25s to come third in his heat. He had a best of 21.89s at home. The top two from eight heats and six ‘fastest losers’ made it to the next round.

Continuing the mediocre Indian show was triple jumper Arpinder Singh. He was a metre behind his Madurai best as he jumped 14.20 metres in the qualification round to come 12th and last in his group. He was 22nd out of 23 jumpers, with the last boy registering no mark. The Indian athletes have completed their individual events while the girls longer relay team is expected to figure in the heats on Saturday. The championships end on Sunday.

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