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Athletics
By K.P. Mohan
India's Shakti Singh who won the silver medal in the men's shot put event at the Asian athletics championships in Manila on Tuesday. — Photo: V. Sudershan
The gold-less trend that looked a possibility for India right from the start, could have been reversed on the final day, but shot-putter Shakti Singh, after leading at the end of the first three rounds with a 19.04m (third attempt), could not match Saad Bilal Mubarak in the final rounds. The 30-year-old Qatari, champion in 1995, 1998 and last year, hit the front in the fourth round with a 19.17 effort and reached his winning putt of 19.41m in the final round. Shakti, all of 41 years, making some sort of a comeback after doing his coach's course at the NIS, Patiala, could not respond adequately to Bilal's putt and managed only 18.74, 18.85 and 18.78 in his last three throws. India's other contestant in this event, Jaiveer Singh, finished eighth with 17.49. The hopes were then pinned on the women's 4x400m relay team of Pinki Parmanik, Manjit Kaur, S. Geetha and Kalpana Reddy but it could do no better than take the bronze behind China and Kazakhstan while the men's longer relay team finished fourth, was disqualified and then re-instated. The disqualification was on the ground that Manojlal had moved into a wrong position on the second exchange, but the Indian officials, after threatening to file a protest of their own against the third-placed Qatar, finally relented with the jury deciding to annul the disqualification. With three silver and three bronze medals, India slipped to its worst ever show, comparable only to the one-gold, one-silver, four bronze tally it had in Jakarta in 1995. Last year, with a second-string team India had managed one gold, from the women's 4x400m team, five silver and four bronze medals. Madhuri Singh ended up fourth (2:03.48) in the 800 metres, won by Myanmar's sensational 26-year-old runner Yin Yin Khine in a personal best 2:01.96. India's Sunita Kanojia gave up around the 500-metre mark Hopes of Kulwinder Singh bettering V.S. Chauhan's 31-year-old decathlon record were also belied. But the gallant Army havildar from Sangrur, posted a personal best yet again, of 7285, a bare 21 points adrift of Chauhan's National mark. His earlier best of 7218 was at Jamshedpur Inter-State meet. A right hamstring strain developed in the 110m hurdles on Tuesday, put paid to his hopes as he performed well below par in two of his stronger events, the discus (38.24 as againt his PB of 40.74) and javelin (56.68 as against his PB of 60.70m). He had a PB, all the same, in pole vault, at 4.40m. Kulwinder needed at least a 4:40.00 in the 1500 metres to get to the National record, but clocked only 4:44.60. He eventually took the sixth place among 16 competitors while P.J. Vinod (6833) ended up ninth. India's Kuldeep Kumar and Gulab Chand finished fifth and sixth respectively in the men's 5000 metres. The results:
Men:
Women:
The final medals Tally at the 15th Asian Athletics Championships.
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