Kanimozhi, Nithya MOP up records in university meet

CHENNAI: Mop Vaishnav College is known to have one of the best volleyball and basketball women’s teams in the state. The college also conducts VASPRO — an inter-college sports meet — regularly with a lot of fanfare, which helps students sharpen their skills. Plus, the college’s encouragement for women to take up various sports has enabled their students to dominate the AL Mudaliar athletics meet, organised by the University of Madras.

On Wednesday, C Kanimozhi (100m hurdles) and S Nithya (discuss throw) bagged gold medals and re-wrote the meet’s records with their splendid displays. Twenty-year old Kanimozhi, who is currently in the final year of her B Com course, clocked 13.8s and erased the mark set by KN Priya in 2004. The latter also is an alumna of MOP Vaishnav. “I am happy to erase the decade- old record that was set by Priya. This is my personal best. It was quite interesting for me to win this medal and I really didn’t expect to create a new meet record.

“But I trained hard and achieved the same timing during practice. I guess things worked for me today,” said an elated Kanimozhi. The lanky youngster credits her success to coach P Nagarajan, and to support from family. “I have two sessions in a day: from 9 to 12 am and from 5 to 7 pm. I do endurance and weight training, along with agility and speed work. I train at Nagarajan sir’s academy (St Joseph’s Sports Academy). He has been my coach from the time I was in eighth standard. He only initiated me into hurdles and heptathlon.

Under his guidance, I have been able to improve my performance over the years.” “I need to improve and concentrate on my starts, and also my reaction time,’’ added the youngster who is now nursing dreams of participating in an international event. For S Nithya, a first year post graduate MA (media management) student, discus throw comes naturally to her. She notched up 41.41m, bettering the 39m mark set by Jayanthi (Ethiraj College) in 2004. “I’ve been taking part in discus throw regularly for the last five years. I have been training under Perumal Ramasamy at the MCC College grounds.

“He has been guiding me ever since I took up the sport in full capacity. My aim is to take part in an international meet,” the 23-year old said. Results (winners): Men: Javelin throw: CM Girish (Gurunanak) 61.09m; 10,000m: A Mano (Loyola) 33:44.7s; Shot put: Thangakrishnan (MCC) 13.47m; 100m: B Sivakumar (Loyola) 10.6s; 400m: Aakash Babu (Loyola) 48.4s; 20km walk: S Ranjith (DG Vaishnav) 1:55.4s. Women: Shot put: B Mantra (Loyola) 12.13m; 10,000 mts: Egnesh (Soka Ikeda) 41:36.87s; Discus throw: S Nithya (MOP Vaishnav) 40.88m (MR); 100m hurdles: C Kanimozhi (MOP Vaishnav) 13.8s (MR); 100m: AP Srija (MOP Vaishnav) 12.2s; 400m: C Mariya Rasathi (Soka Ikeda) 57.1s; Javelin throw: Gowsalya (MOP Vaishnav) 38.98m. ashok@newidnianexpress.com