Hari Shankar Roy in action during the inter-state athletic championship in Chennai on Monday. (PTI)

Chennai: Hari Shankar Roy of Bengal and Bendedict Starly of Tamil Nadu eclipsed the 11-year-old national record in men’s high jump in the 44th inter-state national athletics meet on Monday.

Both Indian Railway employees cleared 2.18m, but Roy was awarded the gold on the basis of lesser number of failures. The earlier mark of 2.17m stood in the name of Chander Pal Singh of Haryana.

Roy and Starly were matching each other in raising the horizontal, but they failed to clear 2.21m after three attempts each. Starly almost cleared the height once, but his right thigh dislodged the bar. The Athletics Federation of India (AFI) has said there will be one more chance for heptathletes and decathletes to qualify for Olympics.

Asian Games high jump silver medallist Bobby Aloysius achieved the Olympic qualification mark on the first day of the inter-state meet, on Sunday. Athens will be her first Olympics.

Meanwhile, according to a report from New Delhi, the Indian 4x100m relay team finished last in the heats at the world junior athletics championships in Grosseto, Italy, on Sunday.

The team comprising A. Arvind, Vishal Saxena, M.I. Muddassir and R. Molla clocked 41.34 seconds to finish behind the US, Poland, Germany, Nigeria and Bahamas. (PTI)