Ram. Murali Krishnan
3 August 2000 - The National (Inter-State) Athletic Championships held at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Chennai (Madras), from July 29 to 31 witnessed nine National and twenty-two meeting records bettered and one equalled as Indian athletes fought their way to obtain the Olympic "ticket".
Noted among them were the Women’s Heptathlon in which two athletes, Soma Biswas (6,186) and GG Pramila (6,105) bettered the existing National Record held by Pramila (5,705) by crossing the magical 6000 point barrier!
Biswas clocked 13.62 for 100m Hurdles, high jumped 1.69, heaved the shot to 13.22, returned a time of 24.23 for the 200m, long jumped 6.19, hurled the javelin to 44.92 and finished the 800m race at 2:11.67 to gather 6186 points.
Pramila, the former NR holder had 13.85, 1.75, 12.20, 24.41, 6.51, 42.62 and 2:18.42 for the above events but fell a few metres before the finish line hence losing both her record and the gold medal.
As for the men, the best performances were recorded by quarter-milers Paramjit Singh (45.56) and P. Ramachandran (45.63), who both bettered the existing mark of 45.70 held by Paramjit.
The men’s 4x100 relay quartet of Thirugnanadurai, Rajeev Balakrishnan, Anand Menezes and Anil Kumar clocked 39.74 whereas the women’s 4x400m relay team, made up of Manjama Kuriakose, Jincy Philips, Paramjit Kaur and K.M. Beenamol, bettered the thirteen year old national record of 3:31.55 to 3:28.11.
Gurudev Singh in the men’s 20km walk with a time of 1:25:21.7 set another NR.
The other women’s national records came from Aruna Devi in 10,000 (34:30.2), Neelam J Singh in Discus (62.49), Jabeshwari Devi in Hammer (58.36), Anuradha Biswal in 100m Hurdles (13.44).
