Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 27

Gurindervir Singh, a star athlete from the district, has added another feather to his cap by claiming a new meet record at the 60th National Inter-State Senior Athletics Championship held at Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports, Patiala.

Breaking his own personal best record of 10.30 seconds, he finished the 100m race in 10.27 seconds that concluded in the late evening hours. With this new record, the 20-year-old won gold medal in the sprinting event.

His coach Sarabjit Happy said as many as 24 athletes had participated in the event. The second spot was also clinched by a city-based youth Lovepreet Singh, who finished the race in 10.47 seconds, and Amia Kumar remained at third spot with bronze medal by consuming 10.49 seconds to complete the dash. He had earlier created the national record of 10.26 seconds in the 100m race.

From practising on city parks to moving to the dharamshala, the athletes trained hard to prove their mettle. “Owing to the lockdown, the government had not allowed practising in the sports complexes. Hence we resort to practising in fields, parks and roofs of our houses in the wee hours. Ahead of this championship, we daily used to practise in the dharamshala,” added Sarabjit, who has been training the two champions for the past five years. Even as Gurindervir created a new meet record, he couldn’t qualify for the upcoming Olympics as the qualifying time for Olympics in 10.05 seconds.

The top athletes — Gurindervir and Lovepreet — will now drill hard for the upcoming Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games and other national and international events.

Apparently, due to the unavailability of synthetic tracks and proper diet and dietician, Gurindervir could not touch the microseconds time for qualifying Olympics. His coach said if the state fulfilled our demand, our players could easily break national record as well. While the sports department only issued diet charges of Rs 200 to the players, they managed to bear all the expenses with the help of donations by NRIs.