The Hindu : Sport : Manjeet Kaur lands silver in 400m

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 11, 2006
ePaper

Sport

Sport

Manjeet Kaur lands silver in 400m

Kamesh Srinivasan

— PHOTO: AFP

HOME STRETCH: Olga Tereshkova (centre) finishes ahead of Manjeet Kaur (left) in the women's 400m final. Pinki Paramanik (right) was fourth.

DOHA: Manjeet Kaur pulled hard in the straight to land the women's 400-metre silver in the Asian Games at the sparsely populated Khalifa Stadium here on Sunday.

With the other Indian in the fray Pinki Paramanik tiring out after a superb surge midway, it was left to Manjeet to chase the Kazakh Olga Tereshkova to the gold.

In the event, it was not to be as the Kazakh pipped the Indian by 0.69 seconds. Manjeet, however, was comfortably ahead of the eventual bronze medallist Asami Tanno of Japan by 0.87 seconds.

"I expected to win the gold, and I am slightly disappointed. Anyway, I had to work very hard for the silver in the end," said the 24-year-old Manjeet.

Manjeet, the national record holder and the Asian champion at Incheon last year, had suffered burns on both her thighs after reportedly spilling soup. In that context, it was a brave effort on her part to run the race.

Vikas Gowda was not at his best in discus throw and finished sixth with a 58.28. He had won the silver behind Ehsan Hadadi of Iran in the last Asian Championship. Hadadi bagged the gold once again with a 63.79.

In the women's 200m heats, K. Chitra returned a 24.74 and failed to qualify, even as the 100m champion Guzel Khubbieva of Uzbekistan and Susanthika Jayasinghe of Sri Lanka asserted themselves in their respective heats.

Mubarak Hassan Shami dominated the men's marathon to clinch the host its first athletics gold in this edition and the first medal in the event.

"I broke away because everybody else in the race was running very slow. The chase pack today was much too slow. That made my gold medal that much easier to get. Of course, the heat was not so bad, but the humidity was very bad. That made it harder to run," said the 26-year-old Kenyan representing Qatar.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport