Kasaragod: Kerala shot putter V S Anupriya (16) won the bronze medal at the Asian Youth (U-18) Athletics Championships at Tashkent in Uzbekistan on Sunday.
She won the medal with a throw of 16.37m, her personal best.
The gold and silver medals were won by Chinese athletes Xinyi Tian and Xu Mongshu with throws of 18.20m and 16.57m respectively.
Though Anupriya lost out on silver by a whisker, her throw won her a spot in the Commonwealth Youth Games to be held at Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago in July.
She will be the first thrower from Kerala to qualify for the Commonwealth Games.
Her moment of glory came after a lot of sacrifices and hard work, said her coach K C Gireesh of Cheruvathur in Kasaragod.
After scoring A+ (the top grade) in all subjects in Class 10 in 2022, Anupriya took the tough decision to drop out of school for a year and train for international events. "She scored A+ without grace marks," said Gireesh, who provides free-of-cost training to discus throwers and shot putters. His five-year-old K C Throws Academy at Kasaragod's Cheruvathur has been consistently producing national champions.
"My coach and I knew what I was doing," Anupriya had told Onmanorama before leaving for Tashkent. Her parents, K Sasi and Rajini of Trikaripur in Kasaragod, backed her decision. "But it was a lot of work explaining to my relatives and neighbours the logic of skipping school," Anupriya had said.
The decision to pick shot put training over schooling was worth it. For the past two years, Anupriya has been the national champion in the Under-18 girl's shot put event. In September, 2022, she won the gold at the National Youth Athletics Championship in Bhopal but did not clear the qualifying mark for the Asian Youth Championship.
In March, 2023, she won the gold at the National Youth Athletics Championship in Udupi with a throw of 15.59m, and cleared the qualifying mark of 14.92m with ease to make it to the Tashkent event.
Gireesh's son K C Servan, an emerging star, won the silver in discus throw at the Asian Youth Championship in Kuwait last year. He missed this year's event due to an injury.
