Dubai: Rithi Raghunathan and Neerja Sriram were the star performers as Our Own English High School Dubai outshone the rest of the field in the final qualifiers of the Third Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD) Youth Athletics Championships last week.
Held at the Higher College of Technology stadium in Academic City, Rithi Raghunathan won the under-14 girls 100 metres in a time of 14.25 seconds and then led the Our Own English High School quartet of Riya D’Souza, Vishnu Priya and Sonu Soby Varghese to the top place in the 4x100 metres relay in 57.43sec.
Her schoolmate Neerja Sriram was also equally impressive as she won top place in the girls under-16 long jump with an effort of 4.10m and then teamed up with Nikila Zachariah, Aaryaa Sivakumar and Shruthi Mariam Raju to win the 4x100 metres relay in 57.80sec.
There were other athletes from Our Own English High School who also fared well, including Akhil Issac, who won the boy’s under-11 100m with a time of 9.07sec, Princeton Meldon who picked up the 100m gold in the boy’s under-14 in 12.71sec, and Neil Sabin, who was fastest in the 100m in the boy’s under-17 with a time of 11.68sec.
Sponsored by CBD in co-ordination with the Dubai Sports Council (DSC), this annual athletic meeting has attracted more than 1,800 students from 82 schools from across the emirates.
Nearly 500 students representing 60 schools have made it to the finals that will be held in six age categories on February 15. Schools stand to benefit from winning part of the Dh500,000 on offer as a cash incentive to the top three finishers in each age category.
