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Tuesday, Oct 23, 2007
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Sport - Athletics

Open Nationals from today

S. Sabanayakan

Doubts linger about participation of Anju

JAMSHEDPUR: Season’s last major athletic championship, the 47th Open National, beginning at the JRD Tata Sports Complex here on Wednesday, has reportedly attracted more than 750 athletes but none can say how many big guns will actually take to the track and field.

All the top notch athletes of the country are figuring in the list provided by the Jharkhand Athletic Association (JAA) but one is not sure whether the two leading athletes, Anju Bobby George (long jump) and Renjith Maheswary (triple jump), who have qualified for the Beijing Olympic Games along with Vikas Gowda (discus throw), will be in fray.

Yet, the meet, originally scheduled to be held at Ranchi, was shifted to Jamshedpur owing to paucity of a synthetic track. And the conduct of the championship was made possible, thanks to the Tata Steel which readily agreed to do so.

At a time when Jharkhand is to host the next National Games, the lack of a synthetic track at Ranchi, the capital of the state, comes as a rude shock to the followers of the sport in India.

Coming to the Open National, the meet will not lack in competition for as many as 180 National campers will try and assess where they stand vis-À-vis their showing in the camp.

Reassurance?

Charles Borromeo, the 1982 Asian Games 800m gold medalist, who is the manager of the meet, informed the media on the eve of the four-day championship that all the most of the National record holders and National campers would be seen in action. There are indeed a few still aspiring to make it to the qualification standards set for the Olympics.

Going by the timings/distances recorded by the Olympic berth aspirations so far in the domestic and international meets, it can safely be said that not too many are in line to make a mark.

Yet, the performances of Joseph Abraham (400m hurdles), Navpreet Singh (shot put) and Sinimole Paulose — now with Tata Steel — in women’s 1500m, while being encouraging, has not been anywhere close to qualifying standards.

There are others like R. Rajeev (800m), Chatholi Hamza (1500m), Surender Singh (5000m and 10,000m), Hari Sankar Roy (high jump) and decathlete P.J. Vinod.

Also in the fray is the National record holder in decathlon Jora Singh. All would be looking to better the magic mark to go to Beijing.

On the ladies side, National record holder Seema Antil, plagued by illness and injuries and not in great form recently might give it her best try in shot put.

So also Krishna Poonia, bronze medal winner at the Doha Games. The competition in the women’s 400m could be interesting, with Chitra K. Soman, Mandeep Kaur, Manjeet Kaur and Iyleen Samantha set to provide the spark.

The meet will have all the electronic gadgets like wind gauge, photo finish camera and electronic timers, among other things.

Dope testing will also be done on a random basis with the emphasis on National campers and extraordinary performers.

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