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100m in 9.51 seconds: Another Kambala runner breaks Srinivas Gowda’s record
Srinivas Gowda’s record did not last long as another Kambala runner Nishant Shetty recorded 143m in just 13.68 seconds which means he covered 100m in 9.51 seconds.
Kambala runner Srinivasa Gowda recently grabbed the headlines after completing 100m in 9.55 seconds - a feat that saw many people compare him with Usain Bolt. However, that record did not last long as another Kambala runner Nishant Shetty recorded 143m in just 13.68 seconds which means he covered 100m in 9.51 seconds. Shetty from Bajagoli Jogibettu achieved the feat at Soorya-Chandra Jodukare Kambala at Venoor.
Kambala is an annual buffalo race held in the southwestern state of Karnataka.Traditionally, it is sponsored by local Tuluva landlords and households in the coastal districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi. As one can observe from the viral picture, the Karnataka man is running alongside a pair of buffalo in a field filled with water.
As soon as Gowda’s feat went viral, Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju invited him for trials at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre in Bengaluru. But Gowda politely refused the offer.
Gowda’s run reminds of a grainy video that made the rounds of social media where a gaunt, mustachioed man, is seen running barefoot and pell-mell down a rural road.
That video surfaced in August last year. The man was 24-year-old farmer Rameshwar Gurjar, and the video was tweeted with the claim that he covered 100m in 11 seconds.
It was promptly retweeted by the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and then again by Rijuju.
Gurjar was immediately brought to the SAI centre in Bhopal, handed a brand new pair of spikes, and told to run in a trial. This time, he clocked 12.9 seconds, finishing last among eight competitors (for context, the Indian record for U14 boys in 100m is 11.19 seconds).
