The standard rose somewhat on the penultimate day of the Federation Cup athletics meet here today with a decathlon national record, and the women’s 1,600m quartet striding well.
Decathlon was the highlight of the otherwise monotonous competition so far at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. Haryana’s Jora Singh’s effort in gruelling ten events fetched him gold with 7,502 points. It was not only better than his own meet mark of 7,120, but also a new national record. The previous national mark of 7,325 was set by Kulwinder Singh in 2005.
Kerala’s PJ Vinod, who was second with 7,382 points, also broke both the national and meet records. Interestingly, at the last Games, Jamie Stephen Quarry of Scotland had won bronze with 7630 points. That mark isn’t that close, considering his overall average performance, but it could end as an “exposure trip” for Jora.
At the fag end of the day, seasoned hurdler Anuradha Biswal clocked 13.48 seconds to improve upon her meet record of 13.57, which she had set in 2000.
Regarding the current form of the top women 400m runners, experts have not only predicted a sub-52-second run in the final tomorrow, but were also of the view that the top four would dip below the mark. “The final will be a good race,” said one of the coaches.
The coach’s calculation were apparently based on the timings clocked by the finalists in the heats (semis and first round) today.
Apart from Olympian Manjit Kaur, Chitra Soman, S Geetha and Rajwinder Kaur, women’s 800m winner Pinky Parmanik has also qualified for the finals. Surprisingly, with a time of 54.18, Pinky topped the list of the finalists.
Tomorrow is the concluding day, and as many as 15 finals will be held.
Also, AFI selection committee will be meeting tomorrow to decide the composition of the squad for Melbourne. Besides long jumper Anju Bobby George and thrower Vikas Gowda, the women’s 4x400m relay team is expected to get the nod.