Preeja secures Olympic berth

Surendra Singh eclipsed a long-standing 10,000m Indian record (28:48.72s), clipping off over 25 seconds off Hari...

Surendra Singh eclipsed a long-standing 10,000m Indian record (28:48.72s), clipping off over 25 seconds off Hari Chand’s timing, set at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Surendra completed the race in 28:22.79s at the UK Olympic trials for 10000m organised by British Milers Club as the Nike BMC Grand Prix at Watford, outside of London, and improved his personal best by more than 30 seconds. Though he won the race, he failed to breach the Olympic qualifying mark.

Inspired by Surendra’s run, Preeja Sreedharan, current Indian record holder in 10000m, finished second behind Jo Pavey, with a new national record timing of 32:04.41s, slicing more than one minute off her previous record of 33:19.71s set in Kolkata on May 13 last year. Preeja became the first Indian woman 10000m runner to meet ‘B’ qualifying norms for Beijing Olympics, according to reports reaching here from London.

Surendra exploited perfect weather conditions with an average of 2min 52sec per kilometre till 9km mark and surged ahead in final kilometre, which he completed in 2 minutes and 49 seconds. Teammate Sandip Kumar finished fourth with a personal best of 29:17.97s.

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Rajeev Ramesan won the 800m with a personal best timing of 1:47.20s, while Sajeesh Joseph grabbed second place in 1:47.67s. The Indian team will return to Watford on June 18 to take part in BMC Gold Races. The Indian contingent set three national records after arriving in London. They are training at the Newham Sports Academy run by Olympic gold medalist Tessa Sanderson, at Newham.

Jaisha, Sandeep win 1500m

Madurai: O P Jaisha of Kerala and Sandeep of Haryana today took the honours in the 1500m race in the women’s and men’s category respectively on the inaugural day of the 48th inter-state senior athletic championship here.

Jaisha took 4min 24.08seconds to complete her race, leaving behind UP’s Priyanka Singh Patel (4min:27.58) and Kiran Tiwari (4min:31.88) of Uttarakhand) at second and third positions.

It was a hard competition in the men’s 1500m section with Sandeep recording 3min:50.77, just 0.19 seconds ahead of second placed Delhi’s Prakash Verma. Rajan KK of Chhatisgarh finished third with a timing of 3min:53.06 secs.

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In, 10,000m race event, Jharkhand’s Kashinath Aswale and Priti L.Rao emerged victorious in men’s and women’s category respectively. Aswale took 20 min:12.65 secs to reach the finish line ahead of Ajai Kumar Patel (29min: 27.03) and Soji Mathew (29 min:48.26). Priti finished her race in 36min: 23.62 seconds followed by M Sudha (38min: 08.59) and C A Manjusha (40min:08.30).