Twin National meet records on day one of Athletics Championship

Jamshedpur, Oct 23 (UNI) Railways stole the limelight on the inaugural day of the 47th National Open Athletics Championship with two national meet records at the J R D Tata sports complex here today.

Kerala girl Preeja Sreedharan (Railways) achieved new national meet record of 33.25.0 seconds bettering her own record of 34:11:45 in the previous meet in the final of 1000 M women's run.

Another Railways athlet Bendict Starley created a new meet record of 2.19 mt in men's high jump. He surpassed the previous meet record of 2.18 M of Hari Shankar Roy.

Star sprinter Sinimole Paulose of Steel Plants Sports Board (SPSB) bagged Gold in the final of the women's 1500 m Run by clocking 4:15:5 seconds. She, however, was much less than the meet record of O P Jaisha (4:11:83). Her own best performance was 4:10:51 in the last year's Inter-state meet in Chennai.

Sinimole, the cadet Tata Athletics Academy, said, '' For me it was more important to get the Gold than setting the meet record. '' Railways O P Jaisha, the holder of the meet record and Sushma Devi got Silver and Bronze with 4:18:6 and 4:19:1 seconds respectively.

In the men's 1500 m Run final C Hamza of SSCB secured Gold clocking 3:39:8. He missed the national meet record narrowly which was created by Bahadur Prasad (3:40:06) in 1994 meet. Satish Joshep of Railways got Silver as he timed 3:41:6 while ONGC's Pritam Bind had to satisfy with Bronze clocking 3:41:9 seconds.

Another SSCB runner Surender also bagged gold in the men's 1000 M Run clocking 29:04:7.Sandeep Kumar and Soji Mathew of Railways bagged Silver and Bronze in the same event.

UNI