Arunjith blazes to a 145;double146;

8220;I have age on my side. I am just twenty now and I aim to break the national record in the next two years,8221; said Arunjith shortly after his victory in the 200m event.

After taking the 100m gold on Monday, Arunjith today took his second gold with a personal best timing of 21.32 seconds. That is little slower than the meet record set by Ajay Raj Singh at Ludhiana in November 2001 and much slower than the national record of 20.73 set by Anil Kumar in 2000. But this second year BA student of Kollam Fatima Matha College who is just into the third year in athletics said: 8220;People look at me as the successor of Anil Kumar and I am not going to disappoint them.8221;

Arunjith also won the 200m gold at the Senior Nationals at Chennai last year. Vishal Saxena of Uttar Pradesh, who took the bronze in the 100m behind Arunjith and Jagadish Basak of Assam, claimed the silver with a timing of 21.62 seconds while P Muthusamy of Tamil Nadu bagged the bronze with 21.66 seconds. In the women8217;s 200m, HM Jyothi of Andhra Pradesh took the gold with a timing of 24.52 which she herself said as 8220;much below my personal best8221;, while Rakhi Saha of West Bengal took the silver with 25.32 and R Elavarasi of Tamil Nadu got the bronze with 25.38 seconds.

Kerala8217;s domination in the sprint continued as they bagged gold and bronze in the 400m hurdles too. JG Abraham took the gold with a timing of 51.62 seconds while Avin A Thomas clocked 52.79. National Games record-holder P Shankar, who created a new meet record in the last edition at Hyderabad clocking 5.37 seconds, got the silver with a timing of 52.70.

In the 400m hurdles women8217;s section, V Leelavathi of Tamil Nadu took 1:01.74 seconds to complete the race. This is an event where PT Usha completed with a timing of 55.42 seconds at Los Angles Olympics in 1984. She even holds the meet record with 57.07 seconds.

Rains come back to Games

Guwahati: A heavy downpour late in the afternoon brought life to a standstill at all venues of the National Games here. Though the organisers held a couple of events even when the rain continued to fall, a number of events were postponed till the next day.

After threatening to rain for the last two days, the heavens finally opened up today. The worst sufferer from the slight drizzle that was on since morning were the archers, who competed on a virtually muddy range. However, the Met Department8217;s forcast of a bright and sunny day on the morrow will bring smile on the faces of the organisers and of course the fans who have been partying since the Games started on February 9. ENS