Jalandhar: More than 4,200 people participated in the half marathon

Jalandhar: The third ‘One Race’ Jalandhar Half Marathon ‘Daud Jalandhar’ was organised today at the local Guru Gobind Singh Stadium in which internationally experienced athlete 114-year-old Fauja Singh, India’s first blade runner Major DP Singh, Lt Gen Chandpuria, former Cabinet Minister Amarjit Singh Samra, Capital Bank MD Sarvjit Singh Samra, Olympians Manpreet Singh and Mandeep Singh flagged off the race. They flagged off the runners who participated in the 21.1 km race, 10 km race and 5 km race from 6.30 am to 7:30 am. Municipal Corporation Commissioner Gautam Jain participated in the 10 km race to encourage the runners. More than 4,200 runners of all age groups from Jalandhar and surrounding districts as well as Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad participated in the race. With the aim of spreading awareness about mental health, like last year, this year also autistic children were invited to participate in a 3 km run without any sound in collaboration with Punjab’s Soch Autism Society and the race was started with ‘silent flag hoisting’.

This year, in view of the large number of runners participating in the Jalandhar Run, the race route was divided into two parts. The 21 km and 10 km runners started from Guru Gobind Singh Stadium and passed through Icon Mall, Cool Road, Urban Estate Phase-2 Market, Taj Food World, 66 Feet Road, Curo Mall, White Diamond, Jalandhar Heights, CT Institute and took a U-turn and returned to Guru Gobind Singh Stadium via the same route. The 5 km runners started from Guru Gobind Singh Stadium and passed through Mall Road, Aggarwal Dhaba, Johal Market, Income Tax Colony, Urban Estate-2 Market Lights and returned to Guru Gobind Singh Stadium via the same route. This time the winners were given a cash prize of Rs 4,50,000. The prizes were distributed by international athletes Harmilan Bains and Sarvjit Singh Samra. Praising the half marathon, Harmilan Bains said that if international level athletes are to be prepared, then such events should be organized more and more.

In the half marathon, Jaswinder Singh came first, Anil Kumar Yadav second and Rohit Dahiya third in the 21.1 km men’s race, while in the women’s category, Pooja came first, Ruhi Bohra second and Pooja Pandey third. Similarly, in the men’s 10 km race, Sikandar Panwar, Lovepreet Singh and Ajay Singh came first, second and third respectively, while in the women’s category, Seema Devi, Sameer Aulakh and Kiran Sodhi came first, second and third respectively, while in the men’s 5 km race, Tarun Kumar Mishra, Gaurav Chandra Bhatt and Ranjeev Kumar came first, second and third respectively, while in the women’s 5 km race, Gurjit Kaur came first, Prachi Kumari and Vandana Kumari came first, second and third. Apart from this, cash prizes were given to the runners who came first, second and third in each age group. Jalandhar District Administration, Jalandhar Police Commissionerate, Jalandhar Traffic Police, Municipal Corporation, Jalandhar Running Club, Shriman Hospital, Thind Eye Hospital, Lyallpur Khalsa College, Doaba College, KMV Sanskriti School, Castle Tuta, Soch Autism Society, Bisleri, Policy Bazaar, Roja Herbal and RoohAfza provided support to make the race successful.