National Games: Gujarat's Elavenil Valarivan shoots down gold even as 9 records fall in athletics

The athletics arena at IIT, Gandhinagar, however, was on fire, with as many as nine Games' records falling during the course of the action-packed day. Munita Prajapati (Uttar Pradesh), daughter of a construction labourer, and 17-year-old Parvej Khan (Services) were the stars of the day, with Munita setting the first record of this edition in the Women's 20km walk. She clocked a commendable 1 hour 38 minutes 20 seconds.

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Parvej Khan, then, did one better, breaking the highly-rated Bahadur Prasad's 28-year-old Games record in the men's 1500m to the delight of the fraternity. He slashed nearly two seconds off his personal best time to win the metric mile gold in 3:40.89. 2018 Asian Games decathlon champion Swapna Barman, competing in Madhya Pradesh colours here, claimed the women's High Jump record with a clearance of 1.83m while Praveen Chithravel (Tamil Nadu) made light of a depleted Triple Jump field to win gold with a Games record effort of 16.68m. Damneet Singh (Punjab) in the men's Hammer Throw and Kiran Baliyan (Uttar Pradesh) in women's Shot Put also entered the record books. In the men's 100m semifinals, Amlan Borgohain (Assam) also broke the National Games record, set at 10.45 seconds by Haryana's Dharambir Singh in Thiruvananthapuram in 2015. Amlan Borgohain, who has been in good form this season, stopped the clock at 10.28 seconds, two-hundredths of a second outside the National Record held by Amiya Kumar Mallick since