Luka, Bindu move up in 800m at junior meet

New Delhi, July 8: India’s former sprint queen PT Usha had pinned high hopes on her trainee, Tinku Luka, in the global junior athletics meet that got underway on Tuesday at Bydgoszcz, Poland. And Luka proved her big-match temperament by entering the semi-final of the women’s 800m.

A month earlier in Jakarta, after Luka claimed silver in the continental event in the two-lap race, Usha had exuded confidence that her trainee will make it to the final of the World junior championships at least.

According to information reaching here, Luka finished the race in 2:09.20 and qualified by virtue of being among the four fastest runners in the preliminary round. In her own heat, though, she was placed sixth. However, her timing was far below her personal best of 2:08.63, which she had clocked in the Asian junior competition in the second week of June.

SR Bindu, the second Indian in the fray in 800m, finished fourth in her heat to enter the next round, clocking 2:09.51, almost two minutes faster than her time at the recent Asian meet. But MR Poovamma finished last in her heat with 57.94 seconds in the women’s 400m to crash out of the competition.

Zambia’s Racheal Nachula emerged the fastest runner in the qualifiers, clocking an impressive 52.65 seconds to book her spot for Wednesday’s semi-finals. The world leader, Folashade Abugan from Nigeria was victorious in heat 2. She clocked 53.71. Latoya Mcdermott (54.62) of Jamaica, Alyssa Johnson (55.66) of Canada, Josefin Magnusson (54.93) from Sweden and Olha Zemlyak (55.12) of Ukraine were the four fastest runners in the preliminary round.

Indian shot putter Jasdeep Singh Dhillon also failed to advance to the next round.

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