By IANS,
New Delhi : The Salwan Marathon, easily the world’s leading marathon for school children, attracted a record 47,000 runners from 780 schools from the National Capital Region this year and the 17th edition was an organisational marvel in the disciplined manner it was run Sunday.
No overage participant could escape the hawk-eyed Inder Dutt Salwan, director of the Salwan Group of schools and a passionate runner himself. He made sure no cheat escaped and no genuine age-group runner suffered. He verified every winner’s credentials as a double check before he or she went up to receive the prize. All winners were handsomely rewarded, with laptops and runners-up cellphones and gift hampers, and they all went home mighty pleased.
It may be a misnomer to call it a marathon, it is esentially a cross-country race. But for school children it is a marathon run of sorts, wading through a huge mass of runners in each age section.
The atmosphere at the Army Equestrian Centre in the cantonment lends the race a touch of class of its own, all done in an orderly manner with a posse of volunteers acting as marshals and guides.
There is some novelty about the race each passing year. This time, some 1,700 visibly challenged children ran across a 3.5-km stretch through the woods at the Army Polo Ground as Lt. Gen. Munish Sibbal, the Indian Army’s Quarter Master General, flagged off the races.
As Dutt takes great pride in saying that it is a race that transcends all barriers and the list of winners vindicates his claim, most of them representing schools from far-flung areas of the sprawling capital.
The races wee held in eight different categories — visually impaired, Intellectually challenged (3.5 km), under-14 girls and boys (3.5 km), under-16 girls and boys (5.5 km) and under-18 girls and boys (8 km).
The winners and runners-up in each category:
Visually Impaired Boys: Winner – Ankur Dhama (JPM Sr. Secondary
School), 1st runner up – Virender Mishra (G.S.S.S.B.B.), 2nd runner up – Krishna Kant (Kijma Camp).
Visually Impaired Girls: Winner – Nagma (R.V.A.K.V), 1st runner up – Abhirekh (R.V.A.K.V.), 2nd runner up – Shweta from (R.V.A.K.V.).
Intellectually Challanged Boys: Winner – Zakir (B.R. Mehta School), 1st runner up – Gaurav Nidhi (B.R. Mehta School) 2nd runner up – Rajkumar Tiwari.
Under-14 Boys – Winner – Amarjeet Khatri (S.P.X. Najafgarh)
Under-14 Girls – Winner – Usha, (G.S.K.V.)
Under-16 Boys – Winner – Amit Bhardwaj (Jain Inter college
Under-16 Girls – Winner – Pushpa, Ram Krishan Institue)
Under-18 Boys – Winner – Dinesh (Vishvakarma Camp)
Under-18 Girls – Winner – Arpita Saini.