53rd National Open Athletics Championships Railways retained overall champs while Suriya and Dutee Chand completes double Ranchi, Jharkhand – 10 September 2013 After two days of incessant rain the final day’s proceedings in 53rd National Open Athletics Championships concluded on Tuesday evening with yet another hurdle as a massive power shut-down disturbed the valedictory function at Birsa Munda Athletics Stadium here for quite some time. Luckily all the events scheduled for the day have been completed in time. Odisha sprinter Dutee Chand, running under ONGC banner, completes a double by adding the gold in 200m dash to the 100m she won earlier. The Asian bronze medallist was just three hundredth of a second faster than her nearest rival Chavi Sharawat of Railways in the evening’s final. Her state-mate Amiya Kumar Mallick ward off the challenge from Railway star Manikanda Arumugam as he went on to win the race in a noteworthy 21.22 secs. Triple jump national record-holder Renjith Maheswary fails to defend his title as young Arpinder Singh once again upset him for the top spot by just 6 cm. In yet another upset his teammate Sajeesh Joseph could not accomplish his second hat-trick of the championships as he lost the 1500m to services runner Sandeep Karan Singh. Earlier Sajeesh achieved the hat-trick of wins in 800m. Suriya Loganathan (23) completes a distance double, an act she first played in the previous edition of the Open Nationals at Chennai, and become the second athlete from Indian Railways to achieve a double at Ranchi after her teammate M.A. Prajusha did it with long and triple jumps. In that process Suriya improved her personal best to 34:07.45. Her previous best was 34:43.63 which she registered while finished seventh in this year’s Asian championships at Pune. Suriya showed a steady progress in recent times and holding the Indian record for indoors in 3,000m with 9:09.81 clocked during the Asian Indoor Championships at Hangzhou, China, last year. Army lad Kheta Ram (25), who barely missed a podium-finish at the Asian championships, wrests the men’s title with a time of 29:47.92. Former Asian Junior champion Suresh Kumar Patel (ONGC) pushed the Services runner right from the beginning of the race and settled with a silver in a credible 29:48.10. Earlier this year Suresh won the Federation Cup at Patiala and Kheta Ram took the Inter-State title in Chennai. Athletes from services team made a clean sweep of medals in 400m with Kunhu Mohammed taking the top spot that prevents Arokya Rajiv defend the title in this event. U.P. thrower Chandrodaya Narayan Singh recaptured the gold in hammer throw after two years while Parmila (Railways) clinched the medal on yellow metal in the absence of top names in the women’s discus throw. Services team bettered their own meet record in men’s 4x400m relay.
Posted on: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 15:01:00 +0000
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