Last week, 17-year-old Neil Samraj didn’t celebrate, though he broke the national record twice within an hour at the National Youth Athletics Championships in Ludhiana. He clocked 10.53 seconds in the semifinals to become India’s fastest-ever Under-18 sprinter, then improved the time to 10.46 seconds in the final. But Neil felt he missed an opportunity to lower the record further. Unfortunately, he was under the weather.
“The target was to clock sub-10.40 in the finals. But on the day of the competition, I had a cold. There was an hour’s gap between the semis and the final, so I could not really recover as I was unwell. So, with whatever energy I had left, I could produce 10.46. The final was not up to my expectations. I wanted to go faster,” Coimbatore-based Neil said. A significantly faster national record shows Neil is on the right track, with the previous mark at 10.63.