Beenamol qualifies for semi-finals

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Sydney: K M Beenamol became the first Indian woman in 16 years to qualify for an Olympic track semi-final when she squeezed into the fourth place in the third of the four second round heats at the Olympic Stadium thisevening. The 25-year-old Kerala girl clearly felt the strain of running such high class competition, but she did well to move into the next stage with a time of51.81 seconds, which was three-tenths of a second slower than the her first round time. Her time of 51.51 seconds in the first round was the best time of the eight 400m first round heats. The 25-year-old Beenamol, who as a 17-year-old had won the Asian junior championships in 1992, drew a good lane, fourth, but started off rather slow. By the second turn at the 200m mark she was way down in the sixth spot and a qualification looked tough. But she returned a fine finish over the last straight and moved up into the fourth spot and made the final amidst surprised looks from some of the othercompetitors, who obviously had never seen her on the circuit. In fact an exhausted Beenamol didn't even realise she had made the semi-final and only on reaching the tunnel where the runners pick uptheir stuff after the race, did she realise it.Beenamol's heat was won by Lorraine Graham of Jamaica in 50.66s, while Ana Guevara of Mexico (51.19s) and Amy Mbacke Thiam of Senegal (51.64s) were second and third in the slowest of four heats.Sri Lanka's Damayanthi Dharsha failed to make the semi-finals as she finished sixth in the fourth heat won by Cathy Freeman of Australia. Dharsha clocked 52.35s while gold medal favourite Freeman won the race in 50.31s the fastest for the day.National Coach, Bahadur Singh obviously ecstatic over Beenamol's performance, said, "She has saved our face after the first morning's poor show from the men athletes."Beenamol's time was the slowest of the 16 runners who have qualified for the semi-finals to be held on Sunday and that means it would be nearly impossible for her emulate PT Usha who is so far the only Indianwoman finalist at an Olympic Games.Beenamol is interestingly only the third Indian woman to reach an Olympic semi-final in an individual event and all three have been from Kerala. The first to reach an Olympic semi-final was Shiny Wilson in 800m at Los Angeles and a day later Usha made it in the 400m hurdles and later on to the finals, where she finished an agonising one hundredth of a secondoutside a bronze medal.India Abroad News Service