Beenamol sets Asian best, Anuradha crosses Ntl hurdle

The 800m event saw Madhuri Singh and C Latha, also of the Railways, finish in that order behind Beenamol at 2:03.46 and 2:04.15. Incidentally, all the three girls have done better than the AAFI qualifying mark of 2:04.15. But this embarrassment of riches means a tricky problem for the AAFI. It can send only two entries to Busan per event.

Earlier, Sanjay Ghosh of Services pipped teammate and national record-holder P Anil Kumar to win the men’s 100m in 10.5 seconds. Anil, returning from a recent training stint in Ukraine, clocked 10.54 while Karnataka’s Clifford Joshua came third in 10.58.

Runing on lane 8, Sanjay had a difficult start but he picked up after 40-metre mark even as Anil in lane four was threatening as they neared the 80m mark. The one last burst by Ghosh was good enough to take him past Anil to clock his personal best. The 25-year-old havildar with the Army Signals in Jabalpur had won a bronze both in the Federation Cup in Chennai and in the National Games in Punjab last year.

Saraswati Dey of Railways took advantage of the the poor form of Vinita Tripathi and Rachita Mistry, both making their first apperance this season, to win the women’s 100m in 11.47. Vinita and Rachita finished second and third in 11.83 sec and 11.87.

In shot put Bahadur Singh, who bettered the AAFI qualifying mark hurled the shot put to a distance of 19.46 in his third attempt to win the gold. The AAFI qualifying mark for the Asiad in this event was 19.00m. However, this was not Bahadur’s best. Shakti Singh finished second with a throw of 18.08, while Navpreet Singh distance of 17.60 fetched him the bronze. Though Shakti has not met the norm, he will still make it to Busan under AAFI’s ‘flexibility’ rule.

In discus, Shakti Singh (55.58), Harbhajan Singh (50.97) and Amandeep Singh (50.88) finished in that order while among the women, Neelam Jaswant Singh (59.44), Harwant Kaur (58.32) and Seema Antil (54.53) were the winners.