Telangana's Lodenge Ramu runs 46.80s, ends 11-year-old U18 400m mark

Telangana sprinter Lodenge Ramu set a new national record in the boys' under-18 400 metres at the 41st National Junior Athletics Championships in Chennai, clocking 46.80 seconds on Saturday, October 24, 2026, the second day of the meet. His time beat the previous national mark of 46.99 seconds set by Chandan Bauri in 2015, a record that had stood for more than a decade. On the same day, Tamil Nadu's Tharanesh C improved the boys' under-16 shot put national record to 17.86 metres.

The 400 metres is one of the hardest events in athletics to master young: it needs a sprinter's speed and the ability to hold that speed while tiring in the final 100 metres. A national youth record that survived for 11 years shows how difficult the mark was, and Ramu took 0.19 seconds off it. In a one-lap race, that is a clear margin, and he also took more than half a second off the best time ever run at this championship in his age group.

The depth of the race matters too. Three runners finished under 48 seconds, and the runner-up, Manas Shinde, was also inside the old meet record. For Indian athletics, a strong crop of young one-lap runners also matters for the 4x400m relay, which needs several quick runners at the same time.

For young athletes reading this, the record is a reminder of how the pathway works. The National Junior Athletics Championships, run by the Athletics Federation of India, is where age-group athletes from every state are measured against each other and against national standards. Ramu's time now puts his name on the national record list for his age group.

Tharanesh C's shot put mark adds to a strong meet for records. The federation has said that many national and meet records were broken across the five days in Chennai, across age groups from under-14 to under-20.

Short-term: Ramu's run, on only the second day of a five-day meet, makes him one of the leading names in Indian youth sprinting and is likely to bring him to the attention of national selectors and coaching camps for junior events.

Long-term: If he and the other runners in this race keep improving into the under-20 and senior categories, India could have a deeper pool of 400m runners for individual races and relays in the coming years.

Who is affected: Young sprinters and throwers in the national age-group system, coaches in Telangana, Maharashtra, Haryana and Tamil Nadu, and the Athletics Federation of India's junior selectors.

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