Kerala on the move at Guwahati

Preeja Sridharan was not far behind as she collected her third gold of the meet winning the 5,000m today with a timming of 17:1.79 seconds. The Kerala girl had earlier won the 1,500 and 10,000 metre events as well in a span of three hours on Day One of the athletics event.

“This was a good outing ahead of the coming season,” said Preeja, who is eying a good Olympic performance in Beijing. Preeja will be joining the India camp at Bangalore immediately after this meet and prepare for the July Asian Track and Field Championships.

With 12 gold, eight silver and six bronze medals, this was Kerala’s best-ever haul at the Games.

But Arunjith is taking it one step at a time. “After I was dropped from the Doha squad I took this meet as a challenge and wanted to do well here,” said Arunjith soon after anchoring Kerala home with a time of 41.07 sec. “My aim is to be in the national squad and I hope this performance will help me achieve my goal,” he added.

The superiority of the Kerala athletes was very much in evidence as the quartet of G Vishwanathan, Ahamed Kabeer, Roshan Issac John and Arunjith romped home in style without any challange. Tamil Nadu with 41.17 and Andhra Pradesh with 41.31 seconds took the silver and bronze, respectively.

Preeja was ahead of the pack right from the start but hot on her heels were Madhuri K Gurnule of Maharashtra and Preethi Rao of Jharkhand. Though the Jharkhand girl held the lead for a very brief period, both Preeja and Madhuri brooked little challenge as they overtook her comfortable before the 700 metre-mark. In the end Preeja proved too strong as she won the race with relative ease. Madhuri took the silver at 17:2.20 while Preethi had to be content with the bronze at 17:2.83.

In the men’s 5000m, Jharkhand’s performance came as a surprise packet. Sunil Kumar took the gold at 14:17.47 while his statemate and 10,000m champion Kashinath Aswale took the bronze in 14: 18.86. Surender Singh of the Services got the silver.

In the men’s marathon, it was 1-2-3 for the Services Sports Control Board with L Benning creating a meet record and both Satya Prakash and Vikram Singh bettering it. Benning clocked an incredible 2:17:32 to erase the existing mark of 2:24:15 set by Oken Singh at the Manipur National Games in 1999.

However, the national record of 2:12:00 seconds in the name of Shivnath Singh set in 1978 was never under threat. Satya Prakash clocked 2:20:38 for the silver and Vikram Singh clocked 2:20:39 seconds for the bronze.

Meanwhile, the track and field officials faced major embarrassment when the results in the men’s 20km walk was reversed with Services’ Somendro Singh being disqualified and Assam’s Oinam Sushil Kumar Singh declared the winner.

Pull-out justification

GUWAHATI: Bhagyesh Kumar Patel of Gujarat, who participated in the men’s 5,000m event at the Games here didn’t finish his race. The moment Sunil Kumar of Jharkhand hit the tape to win the race, Patel, who had two more laps to go, packed his bags and left for the Games Village.

When asked why he pulled out, he justified thus: “Anything that is not profitable is not worth pursuing. What’s the point in running after the race is already won?” But chef-de-mission of the Gujarat team Ashok Patel said “he had a train to catch soon after the event.” (ENS)