The rough road to Rio de Janeiro was opened on Friday. A day later, Inderjeet Singh had a smooth ride on it, as he booked his ticket to the Olympics, to be held next year, on day two of the Federation Cup athletics meet.
The shot-putter did it with a fair amount of comfort too, as he led an impressive list of qualifiers for the Asian athletics meet to be held in the Chinese city of Wuhan next month. As expected, the 800m runner Tintu Luka made is to the list as well, though she would not have been too pleased with her timing.
The other women who made the mark on another hot day at the Mangala Stadium here were 400m hurdler Anu Raghavan, sprinter Srabani Nanda, who set up an exciting finish with fellow-Odiya Dutee Chand in the women’s 100m final.
Two men each met the mark in 400m hurdles, 800m and javelin throw. Durgesh Kumar Pal had to register his personal best to put fellow-Army man M. Ramachandran in the second spot in the longer hurdles. It was an excellent race that got the goodly crowd going.
“It was exciting to compete with Ramachandran and he really pushed me,” said Durgesh, a silver medalist at the 2010 Youth Olympics. “I was determined to qualify for the Asian meet.”
Javelin-thrower Devender Singh sounded a tad disappointed despite setting a new meet record, with 79.65m, bettering the effort of Rajinder Singh’s mark of 79.32 last year; the latter was reduced to the fourth place.
“I was glad to break the record and qualify for Wuhan, but was expecting more,” he said.
The other record-breaker of the day, Inderjeet too felt he could have done better, Olympic qualification notwithstanding (he achieved 20.65m while the Rio standard is 20.50m).
“My aim here was to go past 21m and break the National record,” said the man who bettered his own meet record of 19.89 set last year. “But my knee was troubling me, so I wasn’t exactly at my best today.”
Neither was Tintu in what, not surprisingly, was a solo 800m race. “The lack of competition has always been a problem for me in domestic meets,” said the London Olympic semifinalist. “I still could have come up with a better time but I hadn’t fully recovered from my cold and cough. Yes, I am happy that I could meet the qualifying mark in spite of all that.”
The men’s 800m winner Jinson Johnson and silver medallist Manjeet Singh also came under the Wuhan mark, as did long-jumper Ankit Sharma.
The results: Men: 100m: 1. Amiya Kumar Mallick (Odi) 10.56s, 2. Jyoti Shankar Debnath (Army) 10.56, 3. Krishnakumar Rane (Mah) 10.58. 800m: 1. Jinson Johnson (Army) 1:47.58s, 2. Manjeet Singh (Tata) 1:48.14, 3. K.A. Bharath (Kar) 1:50.80. 400m hurdles: 1. Durgesh Kumar Pal (Army) 50.29s, 2. M. Ramachandran (Army), 50.35, 3. A. Dharun (TN) 51.14. Long jump: 1. Ankit Sharma (Har) 7.99m, 2. Yugant Shekhar Singh (UP) 7.53, 3. M. Arshad (Air Force) 7.38. Shot put: 1. Inderjeet Singh (Har) 20.65m (NMR, old: 19.89), 2. Tejinder Singh (Pun) 18.08, 3. Om Prakash Singh (ONGC) 18.02. Javelin: 1. Devender Singh (Army) 79.65m (NMR, old: 79.32), 2. Neeraj Chopra (Har) 73.96, 3. Rohit Kumar (Del) 72.72. Decathlon: 1. Abhishek Shetty (Kar) 6630 points, 2. V.V. Raneesh (Guj) 6391; 3. R. Suren (Indian Bank) 6264.
Women: 100m: 1. Srabani Nanda (Odi) 11.59s, 2. Dutee Chand (Odi) 11.86, 3. M.G. Padmini (Kar) 11.89. 800m: 1. Tintu Luka (Ker) 2:04.14s, 2. Gomathi Marimuthu (TN) 2:07.62, 3. Sushma Devi (Har) 2:07.84. 400m hurdles: 1. Anu Raghavan (Ker) 59.13s, 2. M. Arpitha (Kar) 1:00.79, 3. M. Loganayaki (TN) 1:02.99. 20 km walk: 1. Deepamale Devi (Kar) 1:44.29s, 2. Sandeep Kaur (Pun) 1:48.03, 3. Priyanka (UP) 1:52.27.