CHENNAI, July 2: GG Prameela of Southern Railway created a new National record in heptathlon, while PT Usha achieved the qualifying mark in the women's 400 m as five new meet records were established on the second day in the Federation Cup Athletics Championship here today.Prameela also achieved the qualifying mark for the Asian Track and Field meet at Japan, by logging 5541 points in the gruelling seven-discipline event. She eclipsed the existing record of 5361 points set by BN Sumavathi set in December last at Bangalore.
Usha's time of 52.43 was good enough to win the gold, pushing favourite Jyotirmoy Sikdar of Eastern Railway to second and Rosakutty (Southern Railway) to third positions. In the men's 20 km walk, Gurdev Singh covered the distance with a record timing of 1 hr, 35.02 mins. Harish Kushalappa of Karnataka led from start to finish on his way to a record shattering effort of 14.60 secs in the men's 110 m hurdles.
In the men's 200, Anand Menezes of Maharashtra returned with a timing of21.48 secs eclipsing Amit Khanna's (Delhi) record of 21.54 secs set here last year. Southern Railway's Arumugam Pillai leapt to a distance of 2.10 metres to win the men's high jump gold bettering the existing record of Santosh Kumar by 0.4 metres.
Neelam J Singh continued to reign supreme winning the women's discus gold with a heave of 56.26 metres, rewriting her own record of 54.50 metres.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.