Selva Prabhu's lone legal triple jump effort steals limelight as 17 attain U-20 World qualifying marks

Tamil Nadu triple jumper Selva Prabhu made more waves than any of the other 16 athletes, who on Saturday, attained their respective World Athletics U-20 Championships qualifying marks, as his lone legal jump on the final day of the Junior Federation Cup fetched him a gold. He produced an effort on 15.84m in his only legal jump in six tries.

The 17-year-old who hopped, stepped and jumped to a career best distance of 16.03m while winning silver in the Khelo India University Games and extended it to 16.11m in the Tamil Nadu State Championships, was unable to find the right rhythm barring the lone effort in which he did not get a red flag.

Pradeep Senthilkumar (Tamil Nadu) accounted for the only meet record in the men's events on the day, when he clocked 1:49.59 to win the 800m gold. Tanya Chaudhary (Uttar Pradesh) cleared 57.09m in the women's hammer throw while Simmy (Haryana) clocked 1:00.72 in the women's 400m hurdles to re-write the meet record and World U-20 Championships qualification.

Among those who made the qualifying mark for the World U-20 Championships on Saturday were all 800m podium finishers -- Pradeep Senthilkumar (Tamil Nadu), Arjun Waskale and Somanth Chauhan (Haryana) in men's final and Ashakiran Barla (Jharkhand), Laxita Sandilea (Gujarat) and Urvashi (Haryana) in the women's final.

The men's 400m hurdles was the other event that saw all podium finishers in Hardeep (Punjab), Aryan Kashyapa (Karnataka) and Karna Bag (West Bengal) attain qualifying marks. Priya Mohan (Karnataka) beat Priyanka Sikarwar (Uttar Pradesh) in the women's 200m final with a time of 23.98 seconds but provided pace for the silver medallist to also qualify.

Drashtiben P Chaudhri (Gujarat) and Supriti Kachap (Jharkhand) in women's 3000m, Mansi Negi (Uttarakhand) and Rachana (Haryana) in the women's 10000m race walk were the others who attained qualifying marks for the World U-20 Championships.