37yearold National record bettered in
India
From our Correspondent
27 September 2001 – New Delhi, India -
India’s oldest National record was
bettered the other day in Lucknow during
the 41st National Inter-State
Athletic Championships.
The feat came on the opening day of the championships, on September 19, when the 20-year-old Punjab hurdler, Gurpreet Singh, stormed through to a 14.07 finish in the 110m hurdles. He was about five metres clear of the second-placed Sahib Singh, also of Punjab.
The man who had held the record for the past 37 years, Gurbachan Singh Randhawa, was on hand to congratulate Gurpreet.
Randhawa ‘s 14.09 had come while finishing fifth at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. One of only five Indians to have made an athletics final in the Olympics, Randhawa is at present a Central Government observer for athletics. At one time or the other in his career he had also held National records in high jump, javelin throw and the decathlon.
``Gurpreet should be the first Indian to break the 14-second barrier,’’ said Randhawa. ``He should have bettered my record two years ago,’’ the Olympian noted. At that time, in the 1999 Inter-State meet at the same venue, Gurpreet, the son of a farmer from Punjab’s Amritsar town, had clocked 14.19s.
Another notable performance during the three-day meet was by long jumper Sanjay Kumar Rai of Bengal who pulled off a 7.92 on his last jump to snatch the gold from Amrit Pal Singh of Punjab. Both had reached 7.63 in earlier rounds, but with a last jump of 7.55, Amrit Pal was in a position to get the gold. That is until Rai produced the big one on his last jump.
Shot putter Bahadur Singh of Punjab logged a 19.55 while winning the gold, while Pramod Kumar Tiwari of the host unit, Uttar Pradesh, had a meet record in hammer throw at 68.98 metres.
Sprinter Anil Kumar of Kerala, coming back after a lay-off due to illness, claimed the sprint double, clocking 10.50s for the 100 and 21.24s for the 200. He had a 10.40 for the short dash in the semifinals.
Karamjeet Kaur of Punjab set a national record in women’s pole vault, scaling 3.17 metres. She bettered her own record of 3.15 achieved earlier this season. Being a relatively new event, records keep coming almost in every meet in women’s pole vault.
Many a top athlete skipped the meet, either due to injuries or because they were preparing for the South Asian Federation Games in Islamabad, Pakistan, in October or the Afro-Asian Games in New Delhi in November. Both these events have now been postponed indefinitely because of the emerging security concerns in the region.
The long-winding Indian athletics season is scheduled to close with the Open National meet at Chennai from October 19 to 21.
