Patna, Sep 27 (PTI) Sprinters, led by 100m senior national record holder Manikanta Hoblidhar and Animesh Kujur, will be the major attraction on the opening day of the fourth edition of Indian Open U23 athletics competition here on Saturday.

The three-day event will be held at Patliputra Sports Complex here.

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The men's 100m race has attracted a whopping 89 entries. There will be nine heats. The first eight heats will have 10 competitors while the last one will have nine sprinters.

"We have 10 lanes for the 100m event. Hence it was decided to have 10 athletes in each of the heats," Stanley Jones, head of technical team of Athletics Federation of India (AFI), said on the eve of the U23 competition.

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Karnataka's Hoblidhar, who holds the senior national 100m record of 10.23 seconds set last year, will look ahead to maintain his supremacy. He will face stiff challenge from Odisha's Kujur, one of the leading 200m sprinters in the country, who is competing in the 100m dash here.

The women's 100 heats will have 36 participants.

The men's 400m race has also attracted a good number of athletes. There are eight heats, with each having eight athletes.

Going by the entries, 38 runners will contest the men's 1500m event, while the two-day gruelling decathlon has attracted 24 entries.

On the first day of decathlon, the athletes will compete in 100m, long jump, shot put, high jump and 400m. The second day's decathlon events are -- 110m hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw and 1500m run.

The opening event on Saturday will be the men and women's 10,000m race. Haryana's Puneet Yadav, who holds the U23 record of 29:44.64s in 10,000m set in 2022, will be among 25 competitors. The majority of the distance runners are from Uttar Pradesh.

A fair number of Uttar Pradesh runners are in the women's 10,000m race also. In all, there are 12 competitors that will contest for medals on the first day of the meet.

The morning session will have two finals while medals will be distributed in nine disciplines in the post lunch session.

Chief Athletics coach Radhakrishnan Nair said that the competition will be a good platform for promising athletes to showcase their potential.

"Several athletes competing here in Patna will be aiming for a steady performance in the 2025 season to stay in the race for Asian Championship and World Athletics Championships," he said.

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