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| Preeja Sreedharan shows off the gold she won in the National Open meet in Jamshedpur on Tuesday. Preeja rewrote the 10,000m meet record. (PTI) |
Jamshedpur: Two meet records were set on the inaugural day of the 47th National Open Athletics Championship at the JRD Tata Sports Complex on Tuesday.
Preeja Sreedharan and Bendict Starley, both from Railways, hogged the limelight.
Preeja made good use of the early morning conditions to claim the 10,000m gold in 33:25.00 seconds with teammates Kavita Raut (34:00.5) and Preeti L. Rao (36:41.5) finishing second and third, respectively. Preeja erased her own record of 34.11.45, set at the last edition in Delhi.
Jamshedpur’s Sinimole Paulose clinched the 1500m gold. Sinimole, representing the Steel Plants Sports Board, breezed ahead to finishin 4:15.5.
.P. Jaisha and Sushma Devi won the silver (4:18.6) and bronze (4:19.1), respectively. Jaisha’s performance fell well below her gold-winning display of 4:11.83 at the last meet.
Krishna Poonia bagged the discus throw with a hurl of 52.34 m. “I’m coming off a long lay-off. It’s good to win here. I'm looking ahead to qualifying for the Olympic Games,” she said.
Saroj Sihag and Baljit Kaur, representing All India Petroleum Sports Control Board (AIPSCB) won silver (49.17m) and bronze (48.60m), respectively.
The women’s long jump saw Kerela’s Reshmi Bose finishing on top at 6.06m. Railways’ M.A. Prajusha and JJ Shobha had to remain satisfied with second (5.92m) the third (5.88m) slots.
In men’s competition, Surender Kumar of Services took the 10000m gold in 29:04.7. Sandeep Kumar picked up silver (29:32.4) and Soji Mathew took bronze (29:32.8).
Bendict displayed good form to leap 2.19m for the high jump gold. In the process he shattered Hari Shankar Rai’s meet record of 2.18m. Rai managed a silver at 2.15m while Vinod Kumar picked up bronze with a jump of 2.03m.
C. Hamza of Services finished with the 1500m gold with a timing of 3:39.88, pushing Sajeesh Joseph (Railways) and Pritam Bind (ONGC) into second and third spots.
The former clocked 3:41.63 while the latter managed 3:41.90.
