Up state

The five-day Inter-State Athletic Championships 2023, which ended at Bhubaneswar on Monday, lived up to its expectations as on the final two days of the competition, shot putter Tajinderpal Singh Toor and long jumper Murali Sreeshankar set the standard high with world-class performances.

Toor hogged all the limelight on the final day of the competition when he threw the shot put as far as 21.77 metres to improve his two-season-old Asian record of 21.49m. Needless to say a new national record, the effort was also good enough to breach the qualifying standard of the World Athletics Championships.