— Photo: R. Ragu

SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT: Geesh Kumar, who won the men's pole vault edging out meet-record holder Gajanand Upadhya.

CHENNAI: It was a dry day at the Chennai Port Trust National athletics championship on Saturday. The wet spell stopped for the competitions to proceed without hindrance, also dry were the performances in the field events that dominated the agenda on the penultimate day of the championship.

The brief excitement was reserved, as always, for the relay. And the women's 4 x 100m race produced some splendid running and brought Tamil Nadu the gold medal with none other than Anju Bobby George anchoring the quartet to the finish.

AFI quartet

Actually it was the AFI quartet, fielded with the basic intention of getting an idea of the National team's standing, that won the event hands down. But being an inter-State competition, Tamil Nadu, which came in second, was elevated to the number one status.

The men's 4 x 100m was also slated to end on Saturday but with more teams entering the competition it was decided to conduct heats and have the final on Sunday.

The other events, whether it was the men's javelin or pole vault or the women's discus throw, mediocrity was the order of the day. The discus event actually made one thing clear, that of the continuing poor form of Seema Antil, who has the National record in her name but finished second with a heave that was well below her potential.

Not since the 60.56m achieved in the Melbourne Commonwealth Games (which fetched her the silver) has this Haryana girl done anything better, languishing in the sub-60 m phase. Krishna Poonia, who beat her to the gold, also could not break the 60m barrier though she had in recent times gone past that mark twice.

As for the men's javelin, if there was any hope of anyone coming even near to the Asian Games qualifying mark (78.74m) then that was quickly wiped out with Sunil Goswami of Delhi not going beyond 70.07m, incidentally the only one to cross 70m, for the gold medal.

And in pole vault, Geesh Kumar of Kerala came into the arena virtually last and barely edged meet-record holder Gajanand Upadhya, both scaling the same height but Geesh doing so on his first attempt.

Good news

But then the good news for these aspiring athletes is that they may have further opportunities coming their way. That is what the AFI Secretary, Lalit Bhanot, has for them in the form of `trials' in select events. He did not elaborate on that. He said this was being done looking into the conditions in the stadium in the aftermath of the rain, and which, he believed had come in the way of optimum performance.

Mr. Bhanot also revealed the Federation's plans to send the selected athletes for training in Oman shortly before the Doha Games.

The results:

Men: Decathlon: 1. Jora Singh (Har) 6798 pts; 2. S. Bhupinder (Pun) 6553; P.J. Vinod (Ker) 6474. Javelin: 1. Sunil Goswami (Del) 70.07m; 2. Lijeesh Kumar (Kar) 69.82m; 3. Gajender (UP) 69.49m. Pole vault: 1. Geesh Kumar (Ker) 4.80m; 2. Gajanand Upadhya (UP) 4.80m; 3. K. Shaiju (Ker) 4.60m.

Women: Discus: 1. Krishna Poonia (Raj) 57.76m; 2. Seema Antil (Har) 57.60m; 3. Harwant Kaur (Pun) 57.02m. Javelin: 1. Megha Pardesh (UP) 49.12m; 2. S. Sarasavathi (TN) 47.89m; 3. Chumki Chodhary (Del) 45.11m.

4 x 100m: 1. AFI team (H.M. Jyothi, Sheijla, Deepti Jose, Poonam Tomar) 45.62s; 2. Tamil Nadu (Nagalakshmi, A. Jessy, Sharada Narayanan, Anju George) 47.17s; 3. Karnataka (Poonam Bojanna, Shilpa Sundar, G.G. Pramila, Gowramma) 47.49s; 4. Kerala (Jyothi, Beevi Rajan, Aswathy, Sunitha Verghese) 47.55s.

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