Bhubaneswar: It was a red letter day for Odisha javelin thrower Kishore Jena at Colombo on Friday.
Kishore bagged gold medal at the Sri Lanka National Athletics Championship, but more importantly, he did so with a personal best effort of 84.38 metres.
He thus bettered the distance of 81.05m that he had hurled the javelin to earlier this year.
Kishore has come up by leaps and bounds in the last one year, having won gold in Lebanon meet earlier this month with an effort of 78.96m.
There are only a handful of javelin throwers who have done better than him, top of the heap being the one and only Neeraj Chopra.
Neeraj won the Tokyo Olympics gold two years ago with a throw of 87.58m, while his personal best is 89.94m.
The other Indian athlete to have crossed the 85m barrier is Shivpal Singh, whose career best is 86.23.
Kishore is not very far from that mark.
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