Jora sets national decathlon mark

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.