14 athletics records at National Games

The showpiece athletics event of the 31st National Games, which concluded at the Guru Nanak Dev stadium on Sunday, saw as many as 14 meet records being re-written, but the standard in some of the events left much to be desired.

The large number of records did come as a surprise considerating that many of the star athletes, including ace quarter-miler Paramjeet Singh and middle distance runner Sunita Rani, skipped the meet.

There were notable performances from a number of athletes but ace quarter-miler from Kerala K M Beenamol stole the limelight, erasing sprint queen P T Usha's long-standing record in the women's 400 metres while Punjab hurdler Gurpreet Singh claimed two gold medals with record-shatterring feats in the men's 110 metres and 400 metres hurdles.

Punjab, traditionally strong in the throwing events, maintained their supremacy by topping the medals table with a total haul of ten gold while Kerala had to be content with the second position, bagging eight gold medals.

The Tamil Nadu athletes, who made their presence felt in the jumping and middle distance races, returned with six gold medals, followed by Maharashtra (4) and Delhi (3) after six days of athletics action.

Beenamol, who took part in the nationals after a fairly long period, maintained her lead right through to finish the women's 400 metres in 52.71 seconds, eclipsing P T Usha's record of 52.80 seconds, set in 1985, when the modern version of the National Games was launched in New Delhi.

Anil Kumar emerged as the fastest man of the meet with a record-breaking effort in the men's 100 metres, clocking 10.52 seconds to erase Amit Khanna's record of 10.54 seconds.

Punjab's Ajay Raj Singh, who was pushed to the second spot in the 100 metres, made amends by not only bagging the coveted gold medal in the 200 metres, but also setting a new record in the process. Ajay Raj finished with a timing of 21.20 seconds to send Anil Kumar's (21.35 seconds) name out of the record books.

Hardip Kaur and Harwant Kaur also brought cheer to the host state as they forced their way into the record manuals with record-shattering efforts in throwing events.

While Hardip set a new meet record in the women's hammer throw, with an effort of 61.56 metres, Harwant set a new record in the women's discus (55.45 metres).

Tamil Nadu's Anju B George broke the women's long jump record of Lekha Thomas with an effort of 6.61 metres while M Lawrence of Services took the honour in the men's high jump with a record-breaking effort of 2.13 metres.

Orissa's Anuradha Biswal brought the lone gold for her state in the athletics event, setting a new meet record in the women's 100 metres hurdles with a timing of 13.81 seconds.