KOLKATA: Videos of Mrutyam Jayaram Dondapati’s last race flooded the social media just hours after the news of Indian athletics losing two of its young and promising runners in Dondapati and Malaya Barik spread in the country.The youngsters died in a road accident while travelling on a two-wheeler near Nakhara on the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar National Highway in Odisha’s Cuttack district late on Wednesday night.The viral video was that of the men’s 200m event at the Indian Open Under-23 Athletics held in Jaipur last week. Incidentally, both the Odisha athletes, Dondapati and Barik, had participated in the national competition where the former had won a silver in the 200m event.With a World Athletics ranking of 455 in 200m, 21-year-old Dondapati was, in fact, one of the most promising sprinters in the country. He competed in 100m, 200m and 60m sprints as well as in relay events.A two-time Asian U20 Championships bronze medallist, the twice national champion had shot into limelight after he became one of the country’s fastest sprinters in the Under-23 category in 2025.Dondapati had finished second in 200m at 65th National Inter State Senior Athletics Championships held at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar in Jun this year and, in the process, set a personal best time of 20.97 seconds in the event. He had also won a bronze medal at the World University Games and ended with another bronze at Indian Athletics Series – 3 at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, New Delhi, in April this year.Barik, on the other hand, was a quartermiler who had made the state proud at multiple state-level and national competitions.It was just last week in Jaipur that he had set a personal-best time of 48.23 seconds in men’s 400m heats.Barik was also part of the 4x400m Odisha relay team that set a season’s best time at the National Inter State Senior Athletics at the Kalinga, four months ago.Dondapati was an emerging name in India’s under-23 sprinting ranks, marking him as a talent to watch out for in competitive athletics. Their untimely demise represent a loss for the athletics community, both at state and national levels.