BHUBANESWAR: Two 31-year-old athletes, Srabani Nanda of Odisha and Sarita Romit Singh of Uttar Pradesh comfortably won the women's 200m and hammer throw events respectively to grab the limelight in the Indian Grand Prix 3 at the Kalinga Stadium on Saturday.
Nanda, running her first national-level race on home soil since June 2018, won the 200m race in 24.04 seconds. She had run a season's best of 23.68s in Kingston, Jamaica in March.
Rajashree Prasad of West Bengal (25.00s) looked like she would keep pace with Nanda initially but slowed down later and finished third behind Sonia (24.82s) of Haryana.
Sarita showed consistency, winning her third event this year with a best throw over 61.41m. Though she was short of her season's best of 64.16m recorded in the Federation Cup in Kozhikode last month, she had reasons to be happy that each of her four legal efforts on Saturday went past the 60m mark.
Akshay Annappa Shetty (Maharashtra) claimed his first major national-level title when he won the men's 200m in 21.86 seconds.
Having eased past home favourite Amiya Mallick in Race A, he had to wait to confirm his victory.
Aryan Ekka, an Odisha teenager, dipped under 22 seconds for the first time in winning Race B but was one-hundredth of a second behind Akshay.
Tamil Nadu's G Deenadayalan took the men's pole vault gold by clearing 4.60m. Bineesh Jacob (Kerala) and Manish Singh (Haryana) won silver medals with best efforts of 4.40m.
