Bobby Aloysius leaps to gold

Hepthathlete GG Pramila, who was lying fourth in the seven-discipline event on Tuesday, made a brilliant effort to garner an aggregate of 44 points and land a silver medal for the country.

Indian sprinters — Anil Kumar, Rachita Mistry and Vineeta Tripathi — made a classy efforts to reach the finals of the glamour events even as Rajiv Balakrishnan failed to qualify.

Anil Kumar raced in an excellent time of 10.47 second in 100 metres dash in the heats to qualify comfortably, while Vineeta and Rachita made it to the women’s 200m finals with impressive heat timings.

An excellent Vineeta got the better of the event favourite Mayanti Darsha of Sri Lanka as the two ran in the same heat. Darsha is the Asian Games gold medallist.

Rachita was not far behind with a timing of 23.60 seconds and made it to the final as one of the two best timings.

Anil Kumar’s effort in the morning session gave hope to the jubilant Indian camp of striking a medal in 100m sprint. Bronze is a distinct possibility for him and if he continues his good work, silver may not be beyond him.

With quality field missing at Jakarta, Bobby made good use of the opportunity to strike the gold.

But her effort was well short of the Asian mark of 1.97M set by Jan Ling of China and .03 metres short of Meet record (1.94) held by Japanese Imai Miki in the last edition of the Championships at Fukuoka, Japan.

Bobby was tied with Kazakh girl Marina Korzhova at 1.83, but since the Indian achieved the height in her first attempt while Marina cleared the same in her second, she was awarded the gold.

A delighted Bobby said the stint in Finland with coach Miko Lovolo for a year had made all the difference to her confidence. “I owe the first ATF gold to him.”

Bobby started with 1.70m and slowly inched to 1.75m, 1.80m and 1.83. She tried 1.86 but failed to clear.

“It was not my best of days and I found hard to keep my concentration level," said the Chennai-based Customs employee.

Also going in the Indian’s favour was that Marina never got closer to her personal best of 1.90 and also bronze winner Efimeno Tatyana (Krygystan) failing to go anywhere near her personal best of 1.95m.

Quartermilers Paramjit Singh and P Ramachandran provided other moment to cheer for India as both qualified for the men’s 400 metres final.

National record holder Paramjit completed the one-lap race semi-final in 45.92 seconds and came second in his heats.

Ramachandran on the other hand started slowly but came into his own on the bend to take the third place with a timing of 46.20 seconds in other heat.

Qatar’s Ibrahim Ismail was at his aggressive best in the first heat winning it in 45.36.

In a virtual two-horse race, Qatar’s Khamis Abdullah and Hassan al Asmari of Saudi Arabia ran tactically to take the gold and silver in the men’s 3000 metre steeplechase.

The two kept pace with each other till the last 100 metres when Khamis broke free. Khamis timed 8 minutes 47.33 seconds to Hassan’s 8:52.85. Hamid Sadjadi Hezaeh of Iran claimed the bronze completing the race in 8:54.07.

In the women’s pole vault, Japan’s Tayayo Konda equalled the meet record of four metres set by China’s Peng Xioming in Fukuoka in 1998.

Chinese Taipei girl Chang Ko-Hsin made it an absorbing contest, staying afloat in the competition till the 3.90 metre mark.

Elsewhere, Nattapol Namkhuna’s feat of 16.53 metres in the men’s triple jump eclipsed the Asian record of 16.22 set by Chen Yanping of China in Kuala Lumpur Meet in 1991.